The damnation of Theron Ware, or, Illumination

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The

Damnation of Theron Ware
or Illumination

NEW YORK
STONE esf KIMBALL

MDCCCXCVII

COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
STONE AND KIMBALL

FIRST EDITION MARCH 1896
SECOND EDITION JUNE 1896
THIRD EDITION SEPTEMBER 1896
FOURTH EDITION SEPTEMBER 1896
FIFTH EDITION NOVEMBER 1896
SIXTH EDITION DECEMBER 1896

TS

no?

PART I

CHAPTER I

No such throng had ever before been seen in
the building during all its eight years of exist
ence. People were wedged together most un
comfortably upon the seats; they stood packed
in the aisles and overflowed the galleries ; at the
back, in the shadows underneath these galleries,
they formed broad, dense masses about the doors,
through which it would be hopeless to attempt a
passage.

The light, given out from numerous tin-lined
circles of flaring gas-jets arranged on the ceiling,
fell full upon a thousand uplifted faces, — some
framed in bonnets or juvenile curls, others bearded
or crowned with shining baldness, — but all alike
under the spell of a dominant emotion which held
features in abstracted suspense and focussed every
eye upon a common objective point.

The excitement of expectancy reigned upon
each row of countenances, was visible in every
attitude, — nay, seemed a part of the close, over
heated atmosphere itself.

5

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

An observer, looking over these compact lines
of faces and noting the uniform concentration of
eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed that
they were watching for either the jury's verdict in
some peculiarly absorbing criminal trial, or the an
nouncement of the lucky numbers in a great lottery.
These two expressions seemed to alternate, and
even to mingle vaguely, upon the upturned linea
ments of the waiting throng, — the hope of some
unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some
adverse decree.

But a glance forward at the object of this uni
versal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both
hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice
nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session
of the annual Nedahma Conference of the Metho
dist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about
to read out the list of ministerial appointments for
the coming year. This list was evidently written
in a hand strange to him, and the slow, near
sighted old gentleman, having at last sufficiently
rubbed the glasses of his spectacles, and then
adjusted them over his nose with annoying delib
eration, was now silently rehearsing his task to
himself, — the while the clergymen round about
ground their teeth and restlessly shuffled their
feet in impatience.

Upon a closer inspection of the assemblage,
there were a great many of these clergymen. A
dozen or more dignified, and for the most part

6

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

elderly, brethren sat grouped about the Bishop
in the pulpit. As many others, not quite so
staid in mien, and indeed with here and there
almost a suggestion of frivolity in their postures,
were seated on the steps leading down from
this platform. A score of their fellows sat facing
the audience, on chairs tightly wedged into the
space railed off round the pulpit ; and then
came five or six rows of pews, stretching across
the whole breadth of the church, and almost
solidly filled with preachers of the Word.

There were very old men among these, — bent
and decrepit veterans who had known Lorenzo
Dow, and had been ordained by elders who
remembered Francis Asbury and even Whitefield.
They sat now in front places, leaning forward with
trembling and misshapen hands behind their hairy
ears, waiting to hear their names read out on the
superannuated list, it might be for the last time.

The sight of these venerable Fathers in Israel
was good to the eyes, conjuring up, as it did, pic
tures of a time when a plain and homely people
had been served by a fervent and devoted clergy,
— by preachers who lacked in learning and polish,
no doubt, but who gave their lives without dream
of earthly reward to poverty and to the danger and
wearing toil of itinerant missions through the rude
frontier settlements. These pictures had for their
primitive accessories log-huts, rough household im
plements, coarse clothes, and patched old saddles

7

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

which told of weary years of journeying ; but to
even the least sympathetic vision there shone
upon them the glorified light of the Cross and
Crown. Reverend survivors of the heroic times,
their very presence there — sitting meekly at the
altar-rail to hear again the published record of
their uselessness and of their dependence upon
church charity — was in the nature of a bene
diction.

The large majority of those surrounding these
patriarchs were middle-aged men, generally of a
robust type, with burly shoulders, and bushing
beards framing shaven upper lips, and who looked
for the most part like honest and prosperous
farmers attired in their Sunday clothes. As ex
ceptions to this rule, there were scattered stray
specimens of a more urban class, worthies with
neatly trimmed whiskers, white neckcloths, and
even indications of hair-oil, — all eloquent of citi
fied charges ; and now and again the eye singled
out a striking and scholarly face, at once strong
and simple, and instinctively referred it to the
faculty of one of the several theological semi
naries belonging to the Conference.

The effect of these faces as a whole was toward
goodness, candor, and imperturbable self-compla
cency rather than learning or mental astuteness ;
and curiously enough it wore its pleasantest aspect
on the countenances of the older men. The im
press of zeal and moral worth seemed to dimin-

8

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ish by regular gradations as one passed to younger
faces ; and among the very beginners, who had been
ordained only within the past day or two, this de
cline was peculiarly marked. It was almost a
relief to note the relative smallness of their num
ber, so plainly was it to be seen that they were not
the men their forbears had been.

And if those aged, worn-out preachers facing
the pulpit had gazed instead backward over the
congregation, it may be that here too their old
eyes would have detected a difference, — what at
least they would have deemed a decline.

But nothing was further from the minds of the
members of the First M. E. church of Tecumseh
than the suggestion that they were not an improve
ment on those who had gone before them. They
were undoubtedly the smartest and most important
congregation within the limits of the Nedahma
Conference, and this new church edifice of theirs
represented alike a scale of outlay and a standard
of progressive taste in devotional architecture
unique in the Methodism of that whole section of
the State. They had a right to be proud of them
selves, too. They belonged to the substantial
order of the community, with perhaps not so
many very rich men as the Presbyterians had,
but on the other hand with far fewer extremely
poor folk than the Baptists were encumbered with.
The pews in the first four rows of their church
rented for one hundred dollars apiece, — quite up

9

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to the Presbyterian highwater mark, — and they
now had almost abolished free pews altogether.
The oyster suppers given by their Ladies' Aid
Society in the basement of the church during
the winter had established rank among the fash
ionable events in Tecumseh's social calendar.

A comprehensive and satisfied perception of
these advantages was uppermost in the minds of
this local audience, as they waited for the Bishop
to begin his reading. They had entertained this
Bishop and his Presiding Elders, and the rank
and file of common preachers, in a style which
could not have been remotely approached by any
other congregation in the Conference. Where
else, one would like to know, could the Bishop
have been domiciled in a Methodist house where
he might have a sitting-room all to himself, with
his bedroom leading out of it? Every clergy
man present had been provided for in a private
residence, — even down to the Licensed Exhorters,
who were not really ministers at all when you came
to think of it, and who might well thank their stars
that the Conference had assembled among such
open-handed people. There existed a dim feeling
that these Licensed Exhorters — an uncouth crew,
with country store-keepers and lumbermen and even
a horse-doctor among their number — had taken
rather too much for granted, and were not exhibit
ing quite the proper degree of gratitude over their
reception.

10

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

But a more important issue hung now imminent
in the balance, — was Tecumseh to be fairly and
honorably rewarded for her hospitality by being
given the pastor of her choice?

All were agreed — at least among those who
paid pew-rents — upon the great importance of
a change in the pulpit of the First M. E. Church.
A change in persons must of course take place, for
their present pastor had exhausted the three-year
maximum of the itinerant system, but there was
needed much more than that. For a handsome
and expensive church building like this, and
with such a modern and go-ahead congregation, it
was simply a vital necessity to secure an attrac
tive and fashionable preacher. They had held
their own against the Presbyterians these past
few years only by the most strenuous efforts, and
under the depressing disadvantage of a min
ister who preached dreary out-of-date sermons,
and who lacked even the most rudimentary sense
of social distinctions. The Presbyterians had
captured the new cashier of the Adams County
Bank, who had always gone to the Methodist
Church in the town he came from, but now was
lost solely because of this tiresome old fossil of
theirs ; and there were numerous other instances
of the same sort, scarcely less grievous. That
this state of things must be altered was clear.

The unusually large local attendance upon the
sessions of the Conference had given some of the

ii

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

more guileless of visiting brethren a high notion of
Tecumseh's piety ; and perhaps even the most
sophisticated stranger never quite realized how
strictly it was to be explained by the anxiety to
pick out a suitable champion for the fierce Presby
terian competition. Big gatherings assembled
evening after evening to hear the sermons of those
selected to preach, and the church had been
almost impossibly crowded at each of the three
Sunday services. Opinions had naturally differed
a good deal during the earlier stages of this
scrutiny, but after last night's sermon there could
be but one feeling. The man for Tecumseh was
the Reverend Theron Ware.

The choice was an admirable one, from points
of view much more exalted than those of the local
congregation.

You could see Mr. Ware sitting there at the end
of the row inside the altar- rail, — the tall, slender
young man with the broad white brow, thoughtful
eyes, and features moulded into that regularity of
strength which used to characterize the American
Senatorial type in those far-away days of clean
shaven faces and moderate incomes before the
War. The bright-faced, comely, and vivacious
young woman in the second side pew was his wife
— and Tecumseh noted with approbation that she
knew how to dress. There were really no two
better or worthier people in the building than this
young couple, who sat waiting along with the rest

12

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to hear their fate. But unhappily they had come
to know of the effort being made to bring them to
Tecumseh ; and their simple pride in the triumph
of the husband's fine sermon had become swal
lowed up in a terribly anxious conflict of hope and
fear. Neither of them could maintain a satisfac
tory show of composure as the decisive moment
approached. The vision of translation from pov
erty and obscurity to such a splendid post as this,

— truly it was too dazzling for tranquil nerves.
The tedious Bishop had at last begun to call his

roll of names, and the good people of Tecumseh
mentally ticked them oif, one by one, as the list
expanded. They felt that it was like this Bishop

— an unimportant and commonplace figure in
Methodism, not to be mentioned in the same
breath with Simpson and Janes and Kingsley —
that he should begin with the backwoods counties,
and thrust all these remote and pitifully rustic
stations ahead of their own metropolitan charge.
To these they listened but listlessly, — indifferent
alike to the joy and to the dismay which he was
scattering among the divines before him.

The announcements were being doled out with
stumbling hesitation. After each one a little half-
rustling movement through the crowded rows of
clergymen passed mute judgment upon the cruel
blow this brother had received, the reward justly
given to this other, the favoritism by which a third
had profited. The Presiding Elders, whose work

13

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

all this was, stared with gloomy and impersonal
abstraction down upon the rows of blackcoated
humanity spread before them. The ministers
returned this fixed and perfunctory gaze with pale,
set faces, only feebly masking the emotions which
each new name stirred somewhere among them.
The Bishop droned on laboriously, mispronoun
cing words and repeating himself as if he were
reading a catalogue of unfamiliar seeds.

" First church of Tecumseh — Brother Abram
G. Tisdale ! "

There was no doubt about it ! These were
actually the words that had been uttered. After
all this outlay, all this lavish hospitality, all this
sacrifice of time and patience in sitting through
those sermons, to draw from the grab-bag nothing
better than — a Tisdale !

A hum of outraged astonishment — half groan,
half wrathful snort — bounded along from pew to
pew throughout the body of the church. An echo
of it reached the Bishop, and so confused him that
he haltingly repeated the obnoxious line. Every
local eye turned as by intuition to where the
calamitous Tisdale sat, and fastened malignantly
upon him.

Could anything be worse? This Brother Tis
dale was past fifty, — a spindling, rickety, gaunt old
man, with a long horse-like head and vacantly
solemn face, who kept one or the other of his
hands continually fumbling his bony jaw. He had

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

been withdrawn from routine service for a number
of years, doing a little insurance canvassing on his
own account, and also travelling for the Book Con
cern. Now that he wished to return to parochial
work, the richest prize in the whole list, Tecum-
seh, was given to him, — to him who had never
been asked to preach at a conference, and whose
archaic nasal singing of " Greenland's Icy Moun
tains " had made even the Licensed Exhorters
grin ! It was too intolerably dreadful to think of !

An embittered whisper to the effect that Tisdale
was the Bishop's cousin ran round from pew to
pew. This did not happen to be true, but indig
nant Tecumseh gave it entire credit. The throngs
about the doors dwindled as by magic, and the
aisles cleared. Local interest was dead ; and
even some of the pewholders rose and made their
way out. One of these murmured audibly to his
neighbors as he departed that his pew could be
had now for sixty dollars.

So it happened that when, a little later on, the
appointment of Theron Ware to Octavius was read
out, none of the people of Tecumseh either noted
or cared. They had been deeply interested in
him so long as it seemed likely that he was to
come to them, — before their clearly expressed
desire for him had been so monstrously ignored.
But now what became of him was no earthly con
cern of theirs.

After the Doxology had been sung and the Con-

15

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ference formally declared ended, the Wares would
fain have escaped from the flood of handshakings
and boisterous farewells which spread over the
front part of the church. But the clergymen were
unusually insistent upon demonstrations of cor
diality among themselves, — the more, perhaps, be
cause it was evident that the friendliness of their
local hosts had suddenly evaporated ; and, of all
men in the world, the priest incumbent of the
Octavius pulpit now bore down upon them with
noisy effusiveness, and defied evasion.

" Brother Ware — we have never been inter-
duced — but let me clasp your hand ! And —
Sister Ware, I presume — yours too ! "

He was a portly man, who held his head back
so that his face seemed all jowl and mouth and
sandy chin-whisker. He smiled broadly upon
them with half-closed eyes, and shook hands
again.

" I said to 'em," he went on with loud pretence
of heartiness, " the minute I heerd your name
called out for our dear Octavius, ' I must go over
an' interduce myself.' It will be a heavy cross to
part with those dear people, Brother Ware, but if
anything could wean me to the notion, so to speak,
it would be the knowledge that you are to take
up my labors in their midst. Perhaps — ah — per
haps they are jest a trifle close in money matters,
but they come out strong on revivals. They '11
need a good deal o' stirrin' up about parsonage

16

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

expenses, but, oh ! such seasons of grace as we Ve
experienced there together ! " He shook his
head, and closed his eyes altogether, as if trans
ported by his memories.

Brother Ware smiled faintly in decorous re
sponse, and bowed in silence ; but his wife resented
the unctuous beaming of content on the other's
wide countenance, and could not restrain her
tongue.

" You seem to bear up tolerably well under this
heavy cross, as you call it," she said sharply.

" The will o' the Lord, Sister Ware, — the will
o' the Lord ! " he responded, disposed for the
instant to put on his pompous manner with her,
and then deciding to smile again as he moved
off. The circumstance that he was to get an
additional three hundred dollars yearly in his new
place was not mentioned between them.

By a mutual impulse the young couple, when
they had at last gained the cool open air, crossed
the street to the side where over-hanging trees
shaded the infrequent lamps, and they might be
comparatively alone. The wife had taken her
husband's arm, and pressed closely upon it as they
walked. For a time no word passed, but finally
he said, in a grave voice, —

" It is hard upon you, poor girl."

Then she stopped short, buried her face against
his shoulder, and fell to sobbing.

He strove with gentle, whispered remonstrance
2 17

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to win her from this mood, and after a few mo
ments she lifted her head and they resumed their
walk, she wiping her eyes as they went.

" I could n't keep it in a minute longer ! " she
said, catching her breath between phrases. " Oh,
why do they behave so badly to us, Theron? "

He smiled down momentarily upon her as they
moved along, and patted her hand.

" Somebody must have the poor places, Alice,"
he said consolingly. " I am a young man yet,
remember. We must take our turn, and be
patient. For ' we know that all things work to
gether for good.' "

" And your sermon was so head-and-shoulders
above all the others ! " she went on breathlessly.
" Everybody said so ! And Mrs. Parshall heard it
so direct that you were to be sent here, and I know
she told everybody how much I was lotting on it
— I wish we could go right off to-night without
going to her house — I shall be ashamed to look
her in the face — and of course she knows we 're
poked off to that miserable Octavius. — Why,
Theron, they tell me it 's a worse place even than
we Ve got now ! "

" Oh, not at all," he put in reassuringly. " It
has grown to be a large town — oh, quite twice
the size of Tyre. It 's a great Irish place, I 've
heard. Our own church seems to be a good deal
run down there. We must build it up again ; and
the salary is better — a little."

18

But he too was depressed, and they walked on
toward their temporary lodging in a silence full of
mutual grief. It was not until they had come
within sight of this goal that he prefaced by a little
sigh of resignation these further words, —

" Come, let us make the best of it, my girl !
After all, we are in the hands of the Lord."

" Oh, don't, Theron ! " she said hastily. " Don't
talk to me about the Lord to-night; I can't
bear it!"

CHAPTER II

" THERON ! Come out here ! This is the fun
niest thing we have heard yet ! "

Mrs. Ware stood on the platform of her new
kitchen stoop. The bright flood of May-morning
sunshine completely enveloped her girlish form,
clad in a simple, fresh-starched calico gown, and
shone in golden patches upon her light-brown
hair. She had a smile on her face, as she looked
down at the milk boy standing on the bottom step,
— a smile of a doubtful sort, stormily mirthful.

" Come out a minute, Theron ! " she called
again ; and in obedience to the summons the tall
lank figure of her husband appeared in the open
doorway behind her. A long loose, open dress
ing-gown dangled to his knees, and his sallow,
clean-shaven, thoughtful face wore a morning
undress expression of youthful good-nature. He
leaned against the door-sill, crossed his large carpet
slippers, and looked up into the sky, drawing a
long satisfied breath.

" What a beautiful morning ! " he exclaimed.
" The elms over there are full of robins. We must
get up earlier these mornings, and walk."

20

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

His wife indicated the boy with the milk-pail on
his arm, by a wave of her hand.

" Guess what he tells me ! " she said. " It
was n't a mistake at all, our getting no milk yester
day or the Sunday before. It seems that that 's
the custom here, at least so far as the parsonage is
concerned."

"What's the matter, boy?" asked the young
minister, drawling his words a little, and putting a
sense of placid irony into them. " Don't the cows
give milk on Sunday, then? "

The boy was not going to be chaffed. " Oh,
I '11 bring you milk fast enough on Sundays, if you
give me the word," he said with nonchalance.
" Only it won't last long."

" How do you mean, — ' won't last long ' ? "
asked Mrs. Ware, briskly.

The boy liked her, — both for herself, and for
the doughnuts fried with her own hands, which she
gave him on his morning round. He dropped his
half-defiant tone.

" The thing of it 's this," he explained. " Every
new minister starts in saying we can deliver to this
house on Sundays, an' then gives us notice to stop
before the month 's out. It 's the trustees that
does it."

The Rev. Theron Ware uncrossed his feet and
moved out on to the stoop beside his wife.
" What 's that you say? " he interjected. " Don't
they take milk on Sundays? "

21

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Nope ! " answered the boy.

The young couple looked each other in the face
for a puzzled moment, then broke into a laugh.

"Well, we'll try it, anyway," said the preacher.
" You can go on bringing it Sundays till — till — "

" Till you cave in an' tell me to stop," put in
the boy. " All right ! " and he was off on the
instant, the dipper jangling loud incredulity in his
pail as he went.

The Wares exchanged another glance as he
disappeared round the corner of the house, and
another mutual laugh seemed imminent. Then
the wife's face clouded over, and she thrust her
under-lip a trifle forward out of its place in the
straight and gently firm profile.

" It 's just what Wendell Phillips said," she
declared. " ' The Puritan's idea of hell is a place
where everybody has to mind his own business.' '

The young minister stroked his chin thought
fully, and let his gaze wander over the backyard in
silence. The garden parts had not been spaded
up, but lay, a useless stretch of muddy earth,
broken only by last year's cabbage-stumps and
the general litter of dead roots and vegetation.
The door of the tenantless chicken-coop hung
wide open. Before it was a great heap of ashes
and cinders, soaked into grimy hardness by the
recent spring rains, and nearer still an ancient
chopping-block, round which were scattered old
weather-beaten hardwood knots which had defied

22

the axe, parts of broken barrels and packing-boxes,
and a nameless debris of tin cans, clam-shells, and
general rubbish. It was pleasanter to lift the eyes,
and look across the neighbors' fences to the green,
waving tops of the elms on the street beyond.
How lofty and beautiful they were in the morning
sunlight, and with what matchless charm came the
song of the robins, freshly installed in their haunts
among the new pale-green leaves ! Above them,
in the fresh, scented air, glowed the great blue
dome, radiant with light and the purification of
spring.

Theron lifted his thin, long- fingered hand, and
passed it in a slow arch of movement to compre
hend this glorious upper picture.

" What matter any one's ideas of hell," he said,
in soft, grave tones, " when we have that to look
at, and listen to, and fill our lungs with ? It seems
to me that we never feel quite so sure of God's
goodness at other times as we do in these wonder
ful new mornings of spring."

The wife followed his gesture, and her eyes
rested for a brief moment, with pleased interest,
upon the trees and the sky. Then they reverted,
with a harsher scrutiny, to the immediate fore
ground.

"Those Van Sizers ought to be downright
ashamed of themselves," she said, " to leave every
thing in such a muss as this. You must see about
getting a man to clean up the yard, Theron. It 's

23

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

no use your thinking of doing it yourself. In the
first place, it would n't look quite the thing, and,
second, you 'd never get at it in all your born days.
Or if a man would cost too much, we might get a
boy. I daresay Harvey would come around, after
he 'd finished with his milk-route in the forenoon
We could give him his dinner, you know, and I 'd
bake him some cookies. He 's got the greatest
sweet-tooth you ever heard of. And then perhaps
if we gave him a quarter, or say half a dollar, he 'd
be quite satisfied. I '11 speak to him in the morn
ing. We can save a dollar or so that way."

" I suppose every little does help," commented
Mr. Ware, with a doleful lack of conviction. Then
his face brightened. " I tell you what let 's do ! "
he exclaimed. " Get on your street dress, and
we '11 take a long walk, way out into the country.
You Ve never seen the basin, where they float the
log-rafts in, or the big saw-mills. The hills beyond
give you almost mountain effects, they are so steep ;
and they say there 's a sulphur spring among the
slate on the hill-side, somewhere, with trees all
about it ; and we could take some sandwiches with
us—"

"You forget," put in Mrs. Ware, — "those
trustees are coming at eleven."

" So they are ! " assented the young minister,
with something like a sigh. He cast another re
luctant, lingering glance at the sunlit elm boughs,
and, turning, went indoors.

24

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He loitered for an aimless minute in the kitchen,
where his wife, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, now
resumed the interrupted washing of the breakfast
dishes, — perhaps with vague visions of that ever-
receding time to come when they might have a
hired girl to do such work. Then he wandered off
into the room beyond, which served them alike as
living-room and study, and let his eye run along
the two rows of books that constituted his library.
He saw nothing which he wanted to read. Finally
he did take down " Paley's Evidences," and
seated himself in the big armchair, — that costly
and oversized anomaly among his humble house
hold gods ; but the book lay unopened on his
knee, and his eyelids half closed themselves in
sign of revery.

This was his third charge, — this Octavius which
they both knew they were going to dislike so
much.

The first had been in the pleasant dairy and
hop country many miles to the south, on another
watershed and among a different kind of people.
Perhaps, in truth, the grinding labor, the poverty
of ideas, the systematic selfishness of later rural
experience, had not been lacking there ; but they
played no part in the memories which now he
passed in tender review. He recalled instead the
warm sunshine on the fertile expanse of fields ; the
sleek, well-fed herds of " milkers " coming lowing
down the road under the maples ; the prosperous

25

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and hospitable farmhouses, with their orchards in
blossom and their spacious red barns ; the bounti
ful boiled dinners which cheery housewives served
up with their own skilled hands. Of course, he
admitted to himself, it would not be the same if
he were to go back there again. He was conscious
of having moved along — was it, after all, an ad
vance ? — to a point where it was unpleasant to
sit at table with the un fragrant hired man, and
still worse to encounter the bucolic confusion
between the functions of knives and forks. But in
those happy days — young, zealous, himself farm-
bred — these trifles had been invisible to him, and
life there among those kindly husbandmen had
seemed, by contrast with the gaunt surroundings
and gloomy rule of the theological seminary,
luxuriously abundant and free.

It was there too that the crowning blessedness of
his youth — nay, should he not say of all his days ?
— had come to him. There he had first seen
Alice Hastings, — the bright-eyed, frank-faced,
serenely self-reliant girl, who now, less than four
years thereafter, could be heard washing the dishes
out in the parsonage kitchen.

How wonderful she had seemed to him then !
How beautiful and all-beneficent the miracle still
appeared ! Though herself the daughter of a
farmer, her presence on a visit within the borders
of his remote country charge had seemed to make
everything there a hundred times more countrified

26

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

than it had ever been before. She was fresh from
the refinements of a town seminary : she read
books ; it was known that she could play upon the
piano. Her clothes, her manners, her way of
speaking, the readiness of her thoughts and
sprightly tongue, — not least, perhaps, the imposing
current understanding as to her father's wealth, —
placed her on a glorified pinnacle far away from
the girls of the neighborhood. These honest and
good-hearted creatures indeed called ceaseless
attention to her superiority by their deference and
open-mouthed admiration, and treated it as the
most natural thing in the world that their young
minister should be visibly " taken " with her.

Theron Ware, in truth, left this first pastorate of
his the following spring, in a transfiguring halo of
romance. His new appointment was to Tyre, —
a somewhat distant village of traditional local pride
and substance, — and he was to be married only a
day or so before entering upon his pastoral duties
there. The good people among whom he had
begun his ministry took kindly credit to themselves
that he had met his bride while she was " visiting
round " their countryside. In part by jocose in
quiries addressed to the expectant groom ; in part
by the confidences of the postmaster at the corners
concerning the bulk and frequency of the corre
spondence passing between Theron and the now
remote Alice, — they had followed the progress of
the courtship through the autumn and winter with

27

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

friendly zest. When he returned from the con
ference, to say good-bye and confess the happiness
that awaited him, they gave him a " donation," —
quite as if he were a married pastor with a home
of his own, instead of a shy young bachelor, who
received his guests and their contributions in the
house where he boarded.

He went away with tears of mingled regret and
proud joy in his eyes, thinking a good deal upon
their predictions of a distinguished career before
him, feeling infinitely strengthened and upborne
by the hearty fervor of their God- speed, and taking
with him nearly two wagon-loads of vegetables,
apples, canned preserves, assorted furniture, glass
dishes, cheeses, pieced bedquilts, honey, feathers,
and kitchen utensils.

Of the three years' term in Tyre, it was pleas-
antest to dwell upon the beginning.'

The young couple — after being married out at
Alice's home in an adjoining county, under the
depressing conditions of a hopelessly bedridden
mother, and a father and brothers whose percep
tions were obviously closed to the advantages of a
matrimonial connection with Methodism — came
straight to the house which their new congregation
rented as a parsonage. The impulse of reaction
from the rather grim cheerlessness of their wedding
lent fresh gayety to their lighthearted, whimsical
start at housekeeping. They had never laughed
so much in all their lives as they did now in these

28

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

first months, — over their weird ignorance of
domestic details ; with its mishaps, mistakes, and
entertaining discoveries ; over the comical supera
bundances and shortcomings of their "donation"
outfit; over the thousand and one quaint experi
ences of their novel relation to each other, to the
congregation, and to the world of Tyre at large.

Theron, indeed, might be said never to have
laughed before. Up to that time no friendly
student of his character, cataloguing his admirable
qualities, would have thought of including among
them a sense of humor, much less a bent toward
levity. Neither his early strenuous battle to get
away from the farm and achieve such education as
should serve to open to him the gates of profes
sional life, nor the later wave of religious enthusiasm
which caught him up as he stood on the border-land
of manhood, and swept him off into a veritable
new world of views and aspirations, had been a
likely school of merriment. People had prized
him for his innocent candor and guileless mind,
for his good heart, his pious zeal, his modesty about
gifts notably above the average, but it had occurred
to none to suspect in him a latent funny side.

But who could be solemn where Alice was? —
Alice in a quandary over the complications of her
cooking stove ; Alice boiling her potatoes all day,
and her eggs for half an hour ; Alice ordering twenty
pounds of steak and half a pound of sugar, and
striving to extract a breakfast beverage from the

29

THE DAMNATION OF TKERON WARE

unground coffee-bean? Clearly not so tenderly
fond and sympathetic a husband as Theron. He
began by laughing because she laughed, and grew
by swift stages to comprehend, then frankly to
share, her amusement. From this it seemed only
a step to the development of a humor of his own,
doubling, as it were, their sportive resources. He
found himself discovering a new droll aspect in
men and things ; his phraseology took on a dryly
playful form, fittingly to present conceits which
danced up, unabashed, quite into the presence
of lofty and majestic truths. He got from this
nothing but satisfaction ; it obviously involved in
creased claims to popularity among his parishioners,
and consequently magnified powers of usefulness,
and it made life so much more a joy and a thing
to be thankful for. Often, in the midst of the
exchange of merry quip and whimsical suggestion,
bright blossoms on that tree of strength and knowl
edge which he felt expanding now with a mighty
outward pushing in all directions, he would lapse
into deep gravity, and ponder with a swelling
heart the vast unspeakable marvel of his blessed
ness, in being thus enriched and humanized by
daily communion with the most worshipful of
womankind.

This happy and good young couple took the
affections of Tyre by storm. The Methodist Church
there had at no time held its head very high among
the denominations, and for some years back had

3°

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

been in a deplorably sinking state, owing first to
the secession of the Free Methodists and then to
the incumbency of a pastor who scandalized the
community by marrying a black man to a white
woman. But the Wares changed all this. Within
a month the report of Theron's charm and force
in the pulpit was crowding the church building to
its utmost capacity, — and that, too, with some ot
Tyre's best people. Equally winning was the
atmosphere of jollity and juvenile high spirits
which pervaded the parsonage under these new
conditions, and which Theron and Alice seemed
to diffuse wherever they went.

Thus swimmingly their first year sped, amid
universal acclaim. Mrs. Ware had a recognized
social place, quite outside the restricted limits of
Methodism, and shone in it with an unflagging
brilliancy altogether beyond the traditions of Tyre.
Delightful as she was in other people's houses, she
was still more naively fascinating in her own
quaint and somewhat harum-scarum domicile ; and
the drab, two-storied, tin-roofed little parsonage
might well have rattled its clapboards to see if it
was not in dreamland, — so gay was the company,
so light were the hearts, which it sheltered in these
new days. As for Theron, the period was one of
incredible fructification and output. He scarcely
recognized for his own the mind which now was
reaching out on all sides with the arms of an
octopus, exploring unsuspected mines of thought,

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

bringing in rich treasures of deduction, assimilat
ing, building, propounding as if by some force
quite independent of him. He could not look
without blinking timidity at the radiance of the
path stretched out before him, leading upward
to dazzling heights of greatness.

At the end of this first year the Wares suddenly
discovered that they were eight hundred dollars in
debt.

The second year was spent in arriving, by slow
stages and with a cruel wealth of pathetic detail,
at a realization of what being eight hundred dollars
in debt meant.

It was not in their elastic and buoyant natures
to grasp the full significance of the thing at once,
or easily. Their position in the social structure,
too, was all against clear-sightedness in material
matters. A general, for example, uniformed and
in the saddle, advancing through the streets with
his staff in the proud wake of his division's massed
walls of bayonets, cannot be imagined as quailing
at the glance thrown at him by his tailor on the
sidewalk. Similarly, a man invested with sacer
dotal authority, who baptizes, marries, and buries,
who delivers judgments from the pulpit which may
not be questioned in his hearing, and who receives
from all his fellow-men a special deference of
manner and speech, is in the nature of things
prone to see the grocer's book and the butcher's
bill through the little end of the telescope.

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The Wares at the outset had thought it right to
trade as exclusively as possible with members of
their own church society. This loyalty became a
principal element of martyrdom. Theron had his
creditors seated in serried rows before him, Sunday
after Sunday. Alice had her critics consolidated
among those whom it was her chief duty to visit
and profess friendship for. These situations now
began, by regular gradations, to unfold their ter
rors. At the first intimation of discontent, the
Wares made what seemed to them a sweeping
reduction in expenditure. When they heard that
Brother Potter had spoken of them as " poor pay,"
they dismissed their hired girl. A little later,
Theron brought himself to drop a laboriously
casual suggestion as to a possible increase of
salary, and saw with sinking spirits the faces of
the stewards freeze with dumb disapprobation.
Then Alice paid a visit to her parents, only to find
her brothers doggedly hostile to the notion of her
being helped, and her father so much under their
influence that the paltry sum he dared offer barely
covered the expenses of her journey. With an
other turn of the screw, they sold the piano she
had brought with her from home, and cut them
selves down to the bare necessities of life, neither
receiving company nor going out. They never
laughed now, and even smiles grew rare.

By this time Theron's sermons, preached under
that stony glare of people to whom he owed
3 33

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

money, had degenerated to a pitiful level of com
monplace. As a consequence, the attendance
became once more confined to the insufficient
membership of the church, and the trustees com
plained of grievously diminished receipts. When
the Wares, grown desperate, ventured upon the
experiment of trading outside the bounds of the
congregation, the trustees complained again, this
time peremptorily.

Thus the second year dragged itself miserably
to an end. Nor was relief possible, because the
Presiding Elder knew something of the circum
stances, and felt it his duty to send Theron back
for a third year, to pay his debts, and drain the
cup of disciplinary medicine to its dregs.

The worst has been told. Beginning in utter
blackness, this third year, in the second month,
brought a change as welcome as it was unlocked
for. An elderly and important citizen of Tyre, by
name Abram Beekman, whom Theron knew slightly,
and had on occasions seen sitting in one of the back
pews near the door, called one morning at the par
sonage, and electrified its inhabitants by expressing
a desire to wipe off all their old scores for them,
and give them a fresh start in life. As he put the
suggestion, they could find no excuse for rejecting
it. He had watched them, and heard a good deal
about them, and took a fatherly sort of interest in
them. He did not deprecate their regarding the
aid he proffered them in the nature of a loan, but

34

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

they were to make themselves perfectly easy about
it, and never return it at all unless they could spare
it sometime with entire convenience, and felt that
they wanted to do so. As this amazing windfall
finally took shape, it enabled the Wares to live
respectably through the year, and to leave Tyre
with something over one hundred dollars in hand.

It enabled them, too, to revive in a chastened
form their old dream of ultimate success and dis
tinction for Theron. He had demonstrated clearly
enough to himself, during that brief season of un
restrained effulgence, that he had within him the
making of a great pulpit orator. He set to work
now, with resolute purpose, to puzzle out and
master all the principles which underlie this art,
and all the tricks that adorn its superstructure.
He studied it, fastened his thoughts upon it, talked
daily with Alice about it. In the pulpit, addressing
those people who had so darkened his life and
crushed the first happiness out of his home, he
withheld himself from any oratorical display which
could afford them gratification. He put aside, as
well, the thought of attracting once more the non-
Methodists of Tyre, whose early enthusiasm had
spread such pitfalls for his unwary feet. He
practised effects now by piecemeal, with an alert
ear, and calculation in every tone. An ambition,
at once embittered and tearfully solicitous, pos
sessed him.

He reflected now, this morning, with a certain

35

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

incredulous interest, upon that unworthy epoch in
his life history, which seemed so far behind him,
and yet had come to a close only a few weeks ago.
The opportunity had been given him, there at the
Tecumseh Conference, to reveal his quality. He
had risen to its full limit of possibilities, and
preached a great sermon in a manner which he at
least knew was unapproachable. He had made
his most powerful bid for the prize place, had
trebly deserved success — and had been banished
instead to Octavius !

The curious thing was that he did not resent his
failure. Alice had taken it hard, but he himself
was conscious of a sense of spiritual gain. The
influence of the Conference, with its songs and
seasons of prayer and high pressure of emotional
excitement, was still strong upon him. It seemed
years and years since the religious side of him had
been so stirred into motion. He felt, as he lay
back in the chair, and folded his hands over the
book on his knee, that he had indeed come forth
from the fire purified and strengthened. The
ministry to souls diseased beckoned him with a
new and urgent significance. He smiled to re
member that Mr. Beekman, speaking in his shrewd
and pointed way, had asked him whether, looking
it all over, he did n't think it would be better for
him to study law, with a view to sliding out of the
ministry when a good chance offered. It amazed
him now to recall that he had taken this hint seri-

36

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ously, and even gone to the length of finding out
what books law-students began upon.

Thank God ! all that was past and gone now.
The Call sounded, resonant and imperative, in his
ears, and there was no impulse of his heart, no
fibre of his being, which did not stir in devout
response. He closed his eyes, to be the more
wholly alone with the Spirit, that moved him.

The jangling of a bell in the hallway broke
sharply upon his meditations, and on the instant
his wife thrust in her head from the kitchen.

"You'll have to go to the door, Theron ! " she
warned him, in a loud, swift whisper. " I 'm not
fit to be seen. It 's the trustees."

"All right," he said, and rose slowly from
sprawling recumbency to his feet. " I '11 go."

"And don't forget," she added strenuously; " I
believe in Levi Gorringe ! I 've seen him go past
here with his rod and fish-basket twice in eight
days, and that 's a good sign. He 's got a soft side
somewhere. And just keep a stiff upper lip about
the gas, and don't you let them jew you down a
solitary cent on that sidewalk."

"All right," said Theron, again, and moved
reluctantly toward the hall- door.

37

CHAPTER III

WHEN the three trustees had been shown in by
the Rev. Mr. Ware, and had taken seats, an awk
ward little pause ensued. The young minister
looked doubtingly from one face to another, the
while they glanced with inquiring interest about
the room, noting the pictures and appraising the
furniture in their minds.

The obvious leader of the party, Loren Pierce,
a rich quarryman, was an old man of medium size
and mean attire, with a square, beardless face as
hard and impassive in expression as one of his
blocks of limestone. The irregular, thin-lipped
mouth, slightly sunken, and shut with vice-like
firmness, the short snub nose, and the little eyes
squinting from half-closed lids beneath slightly
marked brows, seemed scarcely to attain to the
dignity of features, but evaded attention instead,
as if feeling that they were only there at all from
plain necessity, and ought not to be taken into
account. Mr. Pierce's face did not know how to
smile, — what was the use of smiles? — but its
whole surface radiated secretiveness. Portrayed
on canvas by a master brush, with a ruif or a red

38

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

robe for masquerade, generations of imaginative
amateurs would have seen in it vast-reaching
plots, the skeletons of a dozen dynastic cupboards,
the guarded mysteries of half a century's inter
national diplomacy. The amateurs would have
been wrong again. There was nothing behind
Mr. Pierce 's juiceless countenance more weighty
than a general determination to exact seven per
cent for his money, and some specific notions
about capturing certain brickyards which were
interfering with his quarry-sales. But Octavius
watched him shamble along its sidewalks quite
as the Vienna of dead and forgotten yesterday
might have watched Metternich.

Erastus Winch was of a breezier sort, — a florid,
stout, and sandy man, who spent most of his life
driving over evil country roads in a buggy, secur
ing orders for dairy furniture and certain allied
lines of farm utensils. This practice had given
him a loud voice and a deceptively hearty manner,
to which the other avocation of cheese-buyer,
which he pursued at the Board of Trade meetings
every Monday afternoon, had added a consider
able command of persuasive yet non-committal
language. To look at him, still more to hear him,
one would have sworn he was a good fellow, a
trifle rough and noisy, perhaps, but all right at
bottom. But the County Clerk of Dearborn
County could have told you of agriculturists who
knew Erastus from long and unhappy experience,

39

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and who held him to be even a tighter man than
Loren Pierce in the matter of a mortgage.

The third trustee, Levi Gorringe, set one won
dering at the very first glance what on earth he
was doing in that company. Those who had
known him longest had the least notion; but it
may be added that no one knew him well. He
was a lawyer, and had lived in Octavius for up
wards of ten years ; that is to say, since early man
hood. He had an office on the main street, just
under the principal photograph gallery. Doubt
less he was sometimes in this office ; but his
fellow-townsmen saw him more often in the street
doorway, with the stairs behind him, and the flar
ing show-cases of the photographer on either side,
standing with his hands in his pockets and an
unlighted cigar in his mouth, looking at nothing
in particular. About every other day he went off
after breakfast into the country roundabout, some
times with a rod, sometimes with a gun, but always
alone. He was a bachelor, and slept in a room
at the back of his office, cooking some of his
meals himself, getting others at a restaurant close
by. Though he had little visible practice, he was
understood to be well-to-do and even more, and
people tacitly inferred that he "shaved notes."
The Methodists of Octavius looked upon him as
a queer fish, and through nearly a dozen years
had never quite outgrown their hebdomadal ten
dency to surprise at seeing him enter their church.

40

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He had never, it is true, professed religion, but
they had elected him as a trustee now for a
number of terms, all the same, — partly because he
was their only lawyer, partly because he, like both
his colleagues, held a mortgage on the church
edifice and lot. In person, Mr. Gorringe was a
slender man, with a skin of a clear, uniform citron
tint, black waving hair, and dark gray eyes, and a
thin, high-featured face. He wore a mustache
and pointed chin-tuft ; and, though he was of New
England parentage and had never been further
south than Ocean Grove, he presented a general
effect of old Mississippian traditions and tastes
startlingly at variance with the standards of Dear
born County Methodism. Nothing could con
vince some of the elder sisters that he was not a
drinking man.

The three visitors had completed their survey
of the room now ; and Loren Pierce emitted a dry,
harsh little cough, as a signal that business was
about to begin. At this sou ad, Winch drew up
his feet, and Gorringe untied a parcel of account-
books and papers that he held on his knee.
Theron felt that his countenance must be exhibit
ing to the assembled brethren an unfortunate sense
of helplessness in their hands. He tried to look
more resolute, and forced his lips into a smile.

" Brother Gorringe allus acts as Seckertary,"
said Erastus Winch, beaming broadly upon the
minister, as if the mere mention of the fact pro-

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

moted jollity. " That 's it, Brother Gorringe, —
take your seat at Brother Ware's desk. Mind the
Dominie's pen don't play tricks on you, an' start
off writin' out sermons instid of figgers." The
humorist turned to Theron as the lawyer walked
over to the desk at the window. " I allus have to
caution him about that," he remarked with great
joviality. "An' do you look out afterwards,
Brother Ware, or else you '11 catch that pen o'
yours scribblin' lawyer's lingo in place o' the
Word."

Theron felt bound to exhibit a grin in acknowl
edgment of this pleasantry. The lawyer's change
of position had involved some shifting of the
others' chairs, and the young minister found him
self directly confronted by Brother Pierce 's hard
and colorless old visage. Its little eyes were
watching him, as through a mask, and under their
influence the smile of politeness fled from his lips.
The lawyer on his right, the cheese-buyer to the
left, seemed to recede into distance as he for the
moment returned the gaze of the quarryman.
He waited now for him to speak, as if the others
were of no importance.

" We are a plain sort o' folks up in these
parts," said Brother Pierce, after a slight further
pause. His voice was as dry and rasping as his
cough, and its intonations were those of author
ity. " We walk here," he went on, eying the
minister with a sour regard, " in a meek an*

42

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

humble spirit, in the straight an' narrow way which
leadeth unto life. We ain't gone traipshY after
strange gods, like some people that call them
selves Methodists in other places. We stick by
the Discipline an' the ways of our fathers in Israel.
No new-fangled notions can go down here. Your
wife 'd better take them flowers out of her bunnit
afore next Sunday."

Silence possessed the room for a few moments,
the while Theron, pale-faced and with brows knit,
studied the pattern of the ingrain carpet. Then
he lifted his head, and nodded it in assent.
"Yes," he said; "we will do nothing by which
our ' brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made
weak.' "

Brother Pierce's parchment face showed no sign
of surprise or pleasure at this easy submission.
" Another thing : We don't want no book-learnin'
or dictionary words in our pulpit," he went on
coldly. " Some folks may stomach 'em ; we won't.
Them two sermons o' yours, p'r'aps they 'd do
down in some city place ; but they 're like your
wife's bunnit here, they 're too flowery to suit
us. What we want to hear is the plain, old-fash
ioned Word of God, without any palaver or ' hems
and ha's.' They tell me there 's some parts
where hell 's treated as played-out, — where our
ministers don't like to talk much about it because
people don't want to hear about it. Such preach
ers ought to be put out. They ain't Methodists at

43

all. What we want here, sir, is straight-out, flat-
footed hell, — the burnin' lake o' fire an' brim
stone. Pour it into 'em, hot an' strong. We
can't have too much of it. Work in them awful
deathbeds of Voltaire an' Tom Paine, with the
Devil right there in the room, reachin' for 'em,
an' they yellin' for fright ; that 's what fills the
anxious seat an' brings in souls hand over fist."

Theron's tongue dallied for an instant with the
temptation to comment upon these old-wife fables,
which were so dear to the rural religious heart
when he and I were boys. But it seemed wiser
to only nod again, and let his mentor go on.

" We ain't had no trouble with the Free Meth
odists here," continued Brother Pierce, "jest
because we kept to the old paths, an' seek for
salvation in the good old way. Everybody can
shout ' Amen ! ' as loud and as long as the Spirit
moves him, with us. Some one was savin' you
thought we ought to have a choir and an organ.
No, sirree ! No such torn-foolery for us ! You '11
only stir up feelin' agin yourself by hintin' at such
things. And then, too, our folks don't take no
stock in all that pack o' nonsense about science,
such as tellin' the age of the earth by crackin' up
stones. I 've b'en in the quarry line all my life,
an' / know it 's all humbug ! Why, they say
some folks are goin' round now preachin' that our
grandfathers were all monkeys. That comes from
departin' from the ways of our forefathers, an'

44

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

puttin' in organs an' choirs, an' deckin' our
women-folks out with gewgaws, an' apin' the
fashions of the worldly. I should n't wonder if
them kind did have some monkey blood in 'em.
You '11 find we 're a different sort here."

The young minister preserved silence for a little,
until it became apparent that the old trustee had
had his say out. Even then he raised his head
slowly, and at last made answer in a hesitating
and irresolute way.

" You have been very frank," he said. " I am
obliged to you. A clergyman coming to a new
charge cannot be better served than by having
laid before him a clear statement of the views and
— and spiritual tendencies — of his new flock,
quite at the outset. I feel it to be of especial
value in this case, because I am young in years
and in my ministry, and am conscious of a great
weakness of the flesh. I can see how daily con
tact with a people so attached to the old, simple,
primitive Methodism of Wesley and Asbury may
be a source of much strength to me. I may take
it," he added upon second thought, with an
inquiring glance at Mr. Winch, " that Brother
Pierce' s description of our charge, and its tastes
and needs, meets with your approval?"

Erastus Winch nodded his head and smiled ex
pansively. " Whatever Brother Pierce says, goes ! "
he declared. The lawyer, sitting behind at the
desk by the window, said nothing.

45

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"The place is jest overrun with Irish," Brother
Pierce began again. " They 've got two Catholic
churches here now to our one, and they do jest
as they blamed please at the charter elections.
It 'd be a good idee to pitch into Catholics in gen
eral whenever you can. You could make a hit
that way. I say the State ought to make 'em pay
taxes on their church property. They Ve no right
to be exempted, because they ain't Christians at
all. They 're idolaters, that 's what they are ! I
know 'em! I 've had 'em in my quarries for years,
an' they ain't got no idee of decency or fair dealin'.
Every time the price of stone went up, every man
of 'em would jine to screw more wages out o' me.
Why, they used to keep account o' the amount o'
business I done, an' figger up my profits, an' have
the face to come an' talk to me about 'em, as if
that had anything to do with wages. It 's my
belief their priests put 'em up to it. People don't
begin to reelize, — that church of idolatry '11 be the
ruin o' this country, if it ain't checked in time.
Jest you go at 'em hammer 'n' tongs ! I 've got
Eyetalians in the quarries now. They 're sensible
fellows: they know when they're well off; a
dollar a day, an' they 're satisfied, an' everything
goes smooth."

" But they 're Catholics, the same as the Irish,"
suddenly interjected the lawyer, from his place by
the window. Theron pricked up his ears at the
sound of his voice. There was an anti-Pierce note

46

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

in it, so to speak, which it did him good to hear.
The consciousness of sympathy began on the
instant to inspire him with courage.

" I know some people say they are," Brother
Pierce guardedly retorted ; " but I 've summered
an' wintered both kinds, an' /hold to it they're
different. I grant ye, the Eyetalians are some
given to jabbin' knives into each other, but they
never git up strikes, an' they don't grumble about
wages. Why, look at the way they live, — jest
some weeds an' yarbs dug up on the roadside, an*
stewed in a kettle with a piece o' fat the size o'
your finger, an' a loaf o' bread, an' they 're happy
as a king. There 's some sense in that ; but the
Irish, they 've got to have meat an' potatoes an'
butter jest as if — as if — :>

"As if they'd b'en used to 'em at home," put
in Mr. Winch, to help his colleague out.

The lawyer ostentatiously drew up his chair to
the desk, and began turning over the leaves of his
biggest book. " It 's getting on toward noon,
gentlemen," he said, in an impatient voice.

The business meeting which followed was for a
considerable time confined to hearing extracts
from the books and papers read in a swift and
formal fashion by Mr. Gorringe. If this was
intended to inform the new pastor of the exact
financial situation in Octavius, it lamentably failed
of its puipose. Theron had little knowledge of
figures; and though he tried hard to listen,

47

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and to assume an air of comprehension, he
did not understand much of what he heard. In a
general way he gathered that the church property
was put down at $12,000, on which there was a
debt of $4,800. The annual expenses were
$2,250, of which the principal items were $800 for
his salary, $170 for the rent of the parsonage, and
$319 for interest on the debt. It seemed that last
year the receipts had fallen just under $2,000, and
they now confronted the necessity of making good
this deficit during the coming year, as well as
increasing the regular revenues. Without much
discussion, it was agreed that they should endeavor
to secure the services of a celebrated " debt-raiser,"
early in the autumn, and utilize him in the closing
days of a revival.

Theron knew this "debt-raiser," and had seen
him at work, — a burly, bustling, vulgar man who
took possession of the pulpit as if it were an auc
tioneer's block, and pursued the task of exciting
liberality in the bosoms of the congregation by alter
nating prayer, anecdote, song, and cheap buffoonery
in a manner truly sickening. Would it not be pre
ferable, he feebly suggested, to raise the money by
a festival, or fair, or some other form of entertain
ment which the ladies could manage ?

Brother Pierce shook his head with contempt
uous emphasis. "Our women-folks ain't that
kind," he said. "They did try to hold a sociable
once, but nobody came, and we did n't raise

48

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

more 'n three or four dollars. It ain't their line.
They lack the worldly arts. As the Discipline
commands, they avoid the evil of putting on gold
and costly apparel, and taking such diversions as
cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus."

"Well — of course — if you prefer the * debt-
raiser ' — "Theron began, and took the itemized
account from Gorringe's knee as an excuse for
not finishing the hateful sentence.

He looked down the foolscap sheet, line by line,
with no special sense of what it signified, until his
eye caught upon this little section of the report,
bracketed by itself in the Secretary's neat hand :

INTEREST CHARGE.

First mortgage (1873) . . $1,000 . . (E. Winch) . @ 7 . $ 70
Second mortgage (1876) . 1,700 . . (L. Gorringe) @ 6 . 102
Third mortgage (1878) . 2,100 . . (L. Pierce) . . @ 7 . 147

$4,800 $319

It was no news to him that the three mortgages
on the church property were held by the three
trustees. But as he looked once more, another
feature of the thing struck him as curious.

" I notice that the rates of interest vary," he
remarked without thinking, and then wished the
words unsaid, for the two trustees in view moved
uneasily on their seats.

" Oh, that 's nothing," exclaimed Erastus Winch,
with a boisterous display of jollity. " It 's only
Brother Gorringe's pleasant little way of making a
4 49

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

contribution to our funds. You will notice that, at
the date of all these mortgages, the State rate of
interest was seven per cent. Since then it 's b'en
lowered to six. Well, when that happened, you
see, Brother Gorringe, not being a professin' mem
ber, and so not bound by our rules, he could just
as well as not let his interest down a cent. But
Brother Pierce an' me, we talked it over, an' we
made up our minds we were tied hand an' foot by
our contract. You know how strong the Discipline
lays it down that we must be bound to the letter of
our agreements. That bein' so, we seen it in the
light of duty not to change what we 'd set our hands
to. That 's how it is, Brother Ware."

" I understand," said Theron, with an effort at
polite calmness of tone. "And — is there any
thing else ? "

" There 's this," broke in Brother Pierce : " we're
commanded to be law-abiding people, an' seven
per cent was the law — an' would be now if them
ragamuffins in the Legislation — "

"Surely we needn't go further into that," in
terrupted the minister, conscious of a growing
stiffness in his moral spine. " Have we any other
business before us?"

Brother Pierce's little eyes snapped, and the
wrinkles in his forehead deepened angrily.
"Business?" he demanded. " Yes, plenty of it.
We 've got to reduce expenses. We 're nigh onto
$300 behind-hand this minute. Besides your house-
So

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

rent, you get $800 free an' clear, — that is $15.38
every week, an' only you an' your wife to keep out
of it. Why, when I was your age, young man, and
after that too, I was glad to get $6 a week."

" I don't think my salary is under discussion,
Mr. Pierce — "

" Brother Pierce ! " suggested Winch, in a half-
chuckling undertone.

" Brother Pierce, then ! " echoed Theron, im
patiently. "The Quarterly Conference and the
Estimating Committee deal with that. The trus
tees have no more to do with it than the man in
the moon."

" Come, come, Brother Ware," put in Erastus
Winch, "we mustn't have no hard feelin's.
Brotherly love is what we 're all lookin' after.
Brother Pierce's meanin' was n't agin your drawin*
your full salary, every cent of it, only — only there
are certain little things connected with the parson
age here that we feel you ought to bear. F'r in
stance, there 's the new sidewalk we had to lay in
front of the house here only a month ago. Of
course, if the treasury was flush we would n't say a
word about it. An' then there 's the gas bill here.
Seein' as you get your rent for nothin', it don't
seem much to ask that you should see to lightin'
the place yourself."

" No, I don't think that either is a proper
charge upon me," interposed Theron. " I decline
to pay them."

51

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"We can have the gas shut off," remarked
Brother Pierce, coldly.

" As soon as you like," responded the minister,
sitting erect and tapping the carpet nervously with
his foot. " Only you must understand that I will
take the whole matter to the Quarterly Confer
ence in July. I already see a good many other
interesting questions about the financial manage
ment of this church which might be appropriately
discussed there."

" Oh, come, Brother Ware ! " broke in Trustee
Winch, with a somewhat agitated assumption of
good-feeling. " Surely these are matters we ought
to settle amongst ourselves. We never yet asked
outsiders to meddle with our business here. It 's
our motto, Brother Ware. I say, if you Ve got a
motto, stand by it."

" Well, my motto," said Theron, " is to be be
haved decently to by those with whom I have to
deal ; and I also propose to stand by it."

Brother Pierce rose gingerly to his feet, with
the hesitation of an old man not sure about his
knees. When he had straightened himself, he put
on his hat, and eyed the minister sternly from
beneath its brim.

"The Lord gives us crosses grievous to our
natur'," he said, " an' we 're told to bear 'em
cheerfully as long as they 're on our backs ; but
there ain't nothin' said agin our unloadin' 'em
in the ditch the minute we git the chance. I

52

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

guess you won't last here more 'n a twelve
month."

He pulled his soft and discolored old hat down
over his brows with a significantly hostile nod,
and, turning, stumped toward the hall-door without
offering to shake hands.

The other trustees had risen likewise, in tacit
recognition that the meeting was over. Winch
clasped the minister's hand in his own broad,
hard palm, and squeezed it in an exuberant grip.
"Don't mind his little ways, Brother Ware," he
urged in a loud, unctuous whisper, with a grin
ning backward nod : " he 's a trifle skittish some
times when you don't give him free rein ; but
he 's all wool an' a yard wide when it comes to
right-down hard-pan religion. My love to Sister
Ware ; " and he followed the senior trustee into
the hall.

Mr. Gorringe had been tying up his books and
papers. He came now with the bulky parcel
under his arm, and his hat and stick in the other
hand. He could give little but his thumb to
Theron to shake. His face wore a grave expres
sion, and not a line relaxed as, catching the
minister's look, he slowly covered his left eye in a
deliberate wink.

*•••••••

"Well? — and how did it go off?" asked Alice,
from where she knelt by the oven door, a few
minutes later.

53

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

For answer, Theron threw himself wearily into
the big old farm rocking-chair on the other side of
the stove, and shook his head with a lengthened
sigh.

" If it was n't for that man Gorringe of yours,"
he said dejectedly, " I think / should feel like
going off — and learning a trade."

54

CHAPTER IV

ON the following Sunday, young Mrs. Ware
sat alone in the preacher's pew through the
morning service, and everybody noted that the
roses had been taken from her bonnet. In the
evening she was absent, and after the doxology
and benediction several people, under the pretence
of solicitude for her health, tried to pump her
husband as to the reason. He answered their
inquiries civilly enough, but with brevity : she had
stayed at home because she did not feel like com
ing out, — this and nothing more.

The congregation dispersed under a gossip-
laden cloud of consciousness that there must be
something queer about Sister Ware. There was
a tolerably general agreement, however, that the
two sermons of the day had been excellent. Not
even Loren Pierce's railing commentary on the
pastor's introduction of an outlandish word like
epitome — clearly forbidden by the Discipline's
injunction to plain language understood of the
people — availed to sap the satisfaction of the
majority.

Theron himself comprehended that he had
pleased the bulk of his auditors; the knowledge

55

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

left him curiously hot and cold. On the one hand,
there was joy in the apparent prospect that the
congregation would back him up in a stand against
the trustees, if worst came to worst. But, on the
other, the bonnet episode entered his soul. It
had been a source of bitter humiliation to him to
see his wife sitting there beneath the pulpit, shorn
by despotic order of the adornments natural to her
pretty head. But he had even greater pain in
contemplating the effect it had produced upon
Alice herself. She had said not a word on the
subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed
to him eloquent of deep feeling about it. He
made sure that she blamed him for having de
fended his own gas and sidewalk rights with
successful vigor, but permitted the sacrifice of her
poor little inoffensive roses without a protest. In
this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself.
Was it too late to make the error good? He
ventured a hint on this Sunday evening, when he
returned to the parsonage and found her reading
an old weekly newspaper by the light of the
kitchen lamp, to the effect that he fancied there
would be no great danger in putting those roses
back into her bonnet. Without lifting her eyes
from the paper, she answered that she had no
earthly desire to wear roses in her bonnet, and
went on with her reading.

At breakfast next morning Theron found him
self in command of an unusual fund of humorous

56

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

good spirits, and was at pains to make the most
of it, passing whimsical comments on subjects
which the opening day suggested, recalling quaint
and comical memories of the past, and striving his
best to force Alice into a laugh. Formerly her
merry temper had always ignited at the merest
spark of gayety. Now she gave his jokes only
a dutiful half-smile, and uttered scarcely a word in
response to his running fire of talk. When the
meal was finished, she went silently to work to
clear away the dishes.

Theron turned over in his mind the project
of offering to help her, as he had done so often in
those dear old days when they laughingly began life
together. Something decided this project in the
negative for him, and after a few lingering moments
he put on his hat and went out for a walk.

Not even the most doleful and trying hour of
his bitter experience in Tyre had depressed him
like this. Looking back upon those past troubles,
he persuaded himself that he had borne them all
with a light and cheerful heart, simply because
Alice had been one with him in every thought and
emotion. How perfect, how ideally complete,
their sympathy had always been ! With what
absolute unity of mind and soul they had walked
that difficult path together ! And now — hence
forth — was it to be different? The mere sugges
tion of such a thing chilled his veins. He said
aloud to himself as he walked that life would be

57

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

an intolerable curse if Alice were to cease sharing
it with him in every conceivable phase.

He had made his way out of the town, and
tramped along the country hill-road for a consider
able distance, before a merciful light began to
lessen the shadows in the picture of gloom with
which his mind tortured itself. All at once he
stopped short, lifted his head, and looked about
him. The broad valley lay warm and tranquil in
the May sunshine at his feet. In the thicket up
the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chatter
ing shrilly, and the birds sang in tireless choral
confusion. Theron smiled, and drew a long breath.
The gay clamor of the woodland songsters, the
placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly
taken in and made a part of his new mood. He
listened, smiled once more, and then started in a
leisurely way back toward Octavius.

How could he have been so ridiculous as to
fancy that Alice — his Alice — had been changed
into some one else ? He marvelled now at his own
perverse folly. She was overworked, tired out,
— that was all. The task of moving in, of setting
the new household to rights, had been too much
for her. She must have a rest. They must get in
a hired girl.

Once this decision about a servant fixed itself
in the young minister's mind, it drove out the
last vestige of discomfort. He strode along now
in great content, revolving idly a dozen different

58

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

plans for gilding and beautifying this new life of
leisure into which his sanguine thoughts projected
Alice. One of these particularly pleased him, and
waxed in definiteness as he turned it over and
over. He would get another piano for her, in
place of that which had been sacrificed in Tyre.
That beneficent modern invention, the instalment
plan, made this quite feasible, — so easy, in fact,
that it almost seemed as if he should find his wife
playing on the new instrument when he got home.
He would stop in at the music store and see about
it that very day.

Of course, now that these important resolutions
had been taken, it would be a good thing if he
could do something to bring in some extra money.
This was by no means a new notion. He had
mused over the possibility in a formless way ever
since that memorable discovery of indebtedness in
Tyre, and had long ago recognized the hopeless
ness of endeavor in every channel save that of
literature. Latterly his fancy had been stimulated
by reading an account of the profits which Canon
Farrar had derived from his " Life of Christ." If
such a book could command such a bewildering
multitude of readers, Theron felt that there ought
to be a chance for him. So clear did constant
rumination render this assumption that the young
pastor in time had come to regard this prospective
book of his as a substantial asset, which could be
realized without trouble whenever he got around
to it. 59

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He had not, it is true, gone to the length of
seriously considering what should be the subject
of his book. That had not seemed to him to
matter much, so long as it was scriptural. Famili
arity with the process of extracting a fixed amount
of spiritual and intellectual meat from any casual
text, week after week, had given him an idea that
any one of many subjects would do, when the
time came for him to make a choice. He realized
now that the time for a selection had arrived, and
almost simultaneously found himself with a ready-
made decision in his mind. The book should be
about Abraham !

Theron Ware was extremely interested in the
mechanism of his own brain, and followed its
workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could
be more remarkable, he thought, than to thus
discover that, on the instant of his formulating a
desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and
behold ! there his mind, quite on its own initiative,
had the answer waiting for him ! When he had
gone a little further, and the powerful range of
possibilities in the son's revolt against the idolatry
of his father, the image-maker, in the exodus from
the unholy city of Ur, and in the influence of the
new nomadic life upon the little deistic family
group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he
felt that the hand of Providence was plainly dis
cernible in the matter. The book was to be
blessed from its very inception.

60

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Walking homeward briskly now, with his eyes
on the sidewalk and his mind all aglow with crowd
ing suggestions for the new work, and impatience
to be at it, he came abruptly upon a group of men
and boys who occupied the whole path, and were
moving forward so noiselessly that he had not
heard them coming. He almost ran into the
leader of this little procession, and began a stam
mering apology, the final words of which were left
unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him and his
talk were all the faces he saw.

In the centre of the group were four working-
men, bearing between them an extemporized litter
of two poles and a blanket hastily secured across
them with spikes. Most of what this litter held
was covered by another blanket, rounded in coarse
folds over a shapeless bulk. From beneath its
farther end protruded a big broom-like black
beard, thrown upward at such an angle as to hide
everything beyond to those in front. The tall
young minister, stepping aside and standing tip
toe, could see sloping downward behind this hedge
of beard a pinched and chalk-like face, with wide-
open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue,
were moving ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking
sound.

Theron instinctively joined himself to those
who followed the litter, — a motley dozen of street
idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in whispers
explained to him that the man was one of Jerry

61

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Madden's workmen in the wagon-shops, who had
been deployed to trim an elm-tree in front of his
employer's house, and, being unused to such work,
had fallen from the top and broken all his bones.
They would have cared for him at Madden's
house, but he had insisted upon being taken home.
His name was MacEvoy, and he was Joey Mac-
Evoy's father, and likewise Jim's and Hughey's
and Martin's. After a pause the lad, a bright-
eyed, freckled, barefooted wee Irishman, volun
teered the further information that his big brother
had run to bring " Father Forbess," on the chance
that he might be in time to administer " extry
munction."

The way of the silent little procession led
through back streets — where women hanging up
clothes in the yards hurried to the gates, their
aprons full of clothes-pins, to stare open-mouthed
at the passers-by — and came to a halt at last in
an irregular and muddy lane, before one of a half
dozen shanties reared among the ash- heaps and
de'bris of the town's most bedraggled outskirts.

A stout, middle-aged, red-armed woman, already
warned by some messenger of calamity, stood
waiting on the roadside bank. There were whim
pering children clinging to her skirts, and a sur
rounding cluster of women of the neighborhood,
some of the more elderly of whom, shrivelled little
crones in tidy caps, and with their aprons to their
eyes, were beginning in a low-murmured minor

62

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the wail which presently should rise into the
keen of death. Mrs. MacEvoy herself made no
moan, and her broad ruddy face was stern in ex
pression rather than sorrowful. When the litter
stopped beside her, she laid a hand for an instant
on her husband's wet brow, and looked — one
could have sworn impassively — into his staring
eyes. Then, still without a word, she waved the
bearers toward the door, and led the way herself.

Theron, somewhat wonderingly, found himself,
a minute later, inside a dark and ill- smelling room,
the air of which was humid with the steam from a
boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other
ways improved by the presence of a jostling score
of women, all straining their gaze upon the open
door of the only other apartment, — the bed
chamber. Through this they could see the work
men laying MacEvoy on the bed, and standing
awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of
the wife and old Maggie Quirk as they strove to
remove the garments from his crushed limbs. As
the neighbors watched what could be seen of
these proceedings, they whispered among them
selves eulogies of the injured man's industry and
good temper, his habit of bringing his money home
to his wife, and the way he kept his Father Ma-
thew pledge and attended to his religious duties.
They admitted freely that, by the light of his ex
ample, their own husbands and sons left much to
be desired, and from this wandered easily off into

63

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

domestic digressions of their own. But all the
while their eyes were bent upon the bedroom
door ; and Theron made out, after he had grown
accustomed to the gloom and the smell, that many
of them were telling their beads even while they
kept the muttered conversation alive. None of
them paid any attention to him, or seemed to
regard his presence there as unusual.

Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street
doorway a person of a different class. The bright
light shone for a passing instant upon a fashion
able, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably
brilliant shade of red hair beneath it. In another
moment there had edged along through the throng,
to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman,
the owner of this hat and wonderful hair. She
was clad in light and pleasing spring attire, and
carried a parasol with a long oxidized silver handle
of a quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he
saw that her face was of a lengthened oval, with
a luminous rose-tinted skin, full red lips, and big
brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She
made a grave little inclination of her head toward
him, and he bowed in response. Since her arrival,
he noted, the chattering of the others had entirely
ceased.

" I followed the others in, in the hope that I
might be of some assistance," he ventured to ex
plain to her in a low murmur, feeling that at last
here was some one to whom an explanation of his

64

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

presence in this Romish house was due. " I hope
they won't feel that I have intruded."

She nodded her head as if she quite understood.
" They '11 take the will for the deed," she whis
pered back. " Father Forbes will be here in a
minute. Do you know is it too late? "

Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was
darkened by the commanding bulk of a new
comer's figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the
deferential way in which the assembled neighbors
fell back to clear a passage, made his identity clear.
Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed
way as this priest of a strange church advanced
across the room, — a broad-shouldered, portly man
of more than middle height, with a shapely, strong-
lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm, com
manding tread. He carried in his hands, besides
his hat, a small leather- bound case. To this and
to him the women courtesied and bowed their
heads as he passed.

" Come with me," whispered the tall girl with
the parasol to Theron ; and he found himself push
ing along in her wake until they intercepted the
priest just outside the bedroom door. She touched
Father Forbes on the arm.

"Just to tell you that I am here," she said.
The priest nodded with a grave face, and passed
into the other room. In a minute or two the
workmen, Mrs. MacEvoy, and her helper came
out, and the door was shut behind them.

i 65

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" He is making his confession," explained the
young lady. "Stay here for a minute."

She moved over to where the woman of the
house stood, glum- faced and tearless, and whis
pered something to her. A confused movement
among the crowd followed, and out of it presently
resulted a small table, covered with a white cloth,
and bearing on it two unlighted candles, a basin
of water, and a spoon, which was brought forward
and placed in readiness before the closed door.
Some of those nearest this cleared space were
kneeling now, and murmuring a low buzz of prayer
to the click of beads on their rosaries.

The door opened, and Theron saw the priest
standing in the doorway with an uplifted hand.
He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over
his shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a
tranquil and tender light.

One of the workmen fetched from the stove a
brand, lighted the two candles, and bore the table
with its contents into the bedroom. The young
woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly
followed her into the chamber of death, making
one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs.
MacEvoy and her children, which rilled the little
room, and overflowed now outward to the street
door. He found himself bowing with the others
to receive the sprinkled holy water from the priest's
white ringers; kneeling with the others for the
prayers; following in impressed silence with the

66

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

others the strange ceremonial by which the priest
traced crosses of holy oil with his thumb upon
the eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, and feet of the
dying man, wiping off the oil with a piece of
cotton-batting each time after he had repeated
the invocation to forgiveness for that particular
sense. But most of all he was moved by the rich,
novel sound of the Latin as the priest rolled it
forth in the Asperges me, Do mine, and Misereatur
vestri omnipotens Deus, with its soft Continental
vowels and liquid r*s. It seemed to him that he
had never really heard Latin before. Then the
astonishing young woman with the red hair de
claimed the Confiteor, vigorously and with a reso
nant distinctness of enunciation. It was a different
Latin, harsher and more sonorous ; and while it
still dominated the murmured undertone of the
other's prayers, the last moment came.

Theron had stood face to face with death at
many other bedsides ; no other final scene had
stirred him like this. It must have been the girl's
Latin chant, with its clanging reiteration of the
great names, — beatum Michaelem Archangelum,
beatum Joannem Baptistam> sanctos Apostolos
Petrum et Paulum, — invoked with such proud
confidence in this squalid little shanty, which so
strangely affected him.

He came out with the others at last, — the
candles and the folded hands over the crucifix
left behind, — and walked as one in a dream.

6?

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Even by the time that he had gained the outer
doorway, and stood blinking at the bright light
and filling his lungs with honest air once more,
it had begun to seem incredible to him that he
had seen and done all this.

68

CHAPTER V

WHILE Mr. Ware stood thus on the doorstep,
through a minute of formless musing, the priest
and the girl came out, and, somewhat to his con
fusion, made him one of their party. He felt
himself flushing under the idea that they would
think he had waited for them- — was thrusting
himself upon them. The notion prompted him
to bow frigidly in response to Father Forbes'
pleasant "I am glad to meet you, sir," and his
outstretched hand.

" I dropped in by the — the merest accident,"
Theron said. "I met them bringing the poor
man home, and — and quite without thinking, I
obeyed the impulse to follow them in, and did n't
realize — "

He stopped short, annoyed by the reflection
that this was his second apology. The girl smiled
placidly at him, the while she put up her parasol.

" It did me good to see you there," she said,
quite as if she had known him all her life. " And
so it did the rest of us."

Father Forbes permitted himself a soft little
chuckle, approving rather than mirthful, and
patted her on the shoulder with the air of being
fifty years her senior instead of fifteen. To the

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

minister's relief, he changed the subject as the
three started together toward the road.

"Then, again, no doctor was sent for!" he
exclaimed, as if resuming a familiar subject with
the girl. Then he turned to Theron. " I dare
say you have no such trouble ; but with our poorer
people it is very vexing. They will not call in a
physician, but hurry off first for the clergyman.
I don't know that it is altogether to avoid doctor's
bills, but it amounts to that in effect. Of course
in this case it made no difference ; but I have had
to make it a rule not to go out at night unless they
bring me a physician's card with his assurance that
it is a genuine affair. Why, only last winter, I was
routed up after midnight, and brought off in the
mud and pelting rain up one of the new streets
on the hillside there, simply because a factory girl
who was laced too tight had fainted at a dance.
I slipped and fell into a puddle in the darkness,
ruined a new overcoat, and got drenched to the
skin ; and when I arrived the girl had recovered
and was dancing away again, thirteen to the dozen.
It was then that I made the rule. I hope, Mr.
Ware, that Octavius is producing a pleasant im
pression upon you so far?"

" I scarcely know yet," answered Theron. The
genial talk of the priest, with its whimsical anec
dote, had in truth passed over his head. His
mind still had room for nothing but that novel
death-bed scene, with the winged captain of the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

angelic host, the Baptist, the glorified Fisherman,
and the Preacher, all being summoned down in
the pomp of liturgical Latin to help MacEvoy to
die. " If you don't mind my saying so," he added
hesitatingly, "what I have just seen in there did
make a very powerful impression upon me."

" It is a very ancient ceremony," said the
priest ; " probably Persian, like the baptismal form,
although, for that matter, we can never dig deep
enough for the roots of these things. They all
turn up Turanian if we probe far enough. Our
ways separate here, I 'm afraid. I am delighted
to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Ware. Pray
look in upon me, if you can as well as not. We
are near neighbors, you know."

Father Forbes had shaken hands, and moved
off up another street some distance, before the
voice of the girl recalled Theron to himself.

" Of course you knew him by name," she was say
ing, " and he knew you by sight, and had talked of
you ; but my poor inferior sex has to be introduced.
I am Celia Madden. My father has the wagon-
shops, and I — I play the organ at the church."

"I — I am delighted to make your acquaint
ance," said Theron, conscious as he spoke that he
had slavishly echoed the formula of the priest.
He could think of nothing better to add than,
" Unfortunately, we have no organ in our church."

The girl laughed, as they resumed their walk
down the street. " I 'm afraid I could n't under-

7*

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

take two," she said, and laughed again. Then
she spoke more seriously. " That ceremony must
have interested you a good deal, never having
seen it before. I saw that it was all new to you,
and so I made bold to take you under my wing,
so to speak."

" You were very kind," said the young minister.
" It was really a great experience for me. May —
may I ask, is it a part of your functions, in the
church, I mean, to attend these last rites?"

" Mercy, no ! " replied the girl, spinning the
parasol on her shoulder and smiling at the thought.
" No ; it was only because MacEvoy was one of
our workmen, and really came by his death through
father sending him up to trim a tree. Ann Mac
Evoy will never forgive us that, the longed day she
lives. Did you notice her? She wouldn't speak
to me. After you came out, I tried to tell her
that we would look out for her and the children ;
but all she would say to me was : ' An' fwat would
a wheelwright, an' him the father of a family, be
doin' up a tree ? ' "

They had come now upon the main street of
the village, with its flagstone sidewalk overhung
by a lofty canopy of elm-boughs. Here, for the
space of a block, was concentrated such fashion
able elegance of mansions and ornamental lawns
as Octavius had to offer ; and it was presented
with the irregularity so characteristic of our restless
civilization. Two or three of the houses survived

72

untouched from the earlier days, — prim, decorous
structures, each with its gabled centre and lower
wings,, each with its row of fluted columns support
ing the classical roof of a piazza across its whole
front, each vying with the others in the whiteness
of those wooden walls enveloping its bright green
blinds. One had to look over picket fences to
see these houses, and in doing so caught the
notion that they thus railed themselves off in pride
at being able to remember before the railroad
came to the village, or the wagon-works were
thought of.

Before the neighboring properties the fences
had been swept away, so that one might stroll
from the sidewalk straight across the well-trimmed
sward to any one of a dozen elaborately modern
doorways. Some of the residences, thus frankly
proffering friendship to the passer-by, were of
wood painted in drabs and dusky reds, with bulg
ing windows which marked the native yearning
for the mediaeval, and shingles that strove to be
accounted tiles. Others — a prouder, less preten
tious sort — were of brick or stone, with terra-cotta
mouldings set into the walls, and with real slates
covering the riot of turrets and peaks and dormer
peepholes overhead.

Celia Madden stopped in front of the largest
and most important-looking of these new edifices,
and said, holding out her hand : " Here I am,
once more. Good-morning, Mr. Ware."

T "y

/3

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Theron hoped that his manner did not betray
the flash of surprise he felt in discovering that his
new acquaintance lived in the biggest house in
Octavius. He remembered now that some one
had pointed it out as the abode of the owner of
the wagon factories ; but it had not occurred to
him before to associate this girl with that village
magnate. It was stupid of him, of course, because
she had herself mentioned her father. He looked
at her again with an awkward smile, as he formally
shook the gloved hand she gave him, and lifted
his soft hat. The strong noon sunlight," forcing its
way down between the elms, and beating upon
her parasol of lace- edged, creamy silk, made a halo
about her hair and face at once brilliant and
tender. He had not seen before how beautiful
she was. She nodded in recognition of his salute,
and moved up the lawn walk, spinning the sunshade
on her shoulder.

Though the parsonage was only three blocks
away, the young minister had time to think about
a good many things before he reached home.

First of all, he had to revise in part the arrange
ment of his notions about the Irish. Save for an
occasional isolated and taciturn figure among the
nomadic portion of the hired help in the farm
country, Theron had scarcely ever spoken to a
person of this curiously alien race before. He
remembered now that there had been some dozen
or more Irish families in Tyre, quartered in the

74

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

outskirts among the brickyards, but he had never
come in contact with any of them, or given to their
existence even a passing thought. So far as per
sonal acquaintance went, the Irish had been to
him only a name.

But what a sinister and repellent name ! His
views on this general subject were merely those
common to his communion and his environment.
He took it for granted, for example, that in the
large cities most of the poverty and all the drunk
enness, crime, and political corruption were due
to the perverse qualities of this foreign people, —
qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil
direction by the baleful influence of a false and
idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that
he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on
this point. His boyhood had been spent in those
bitter days when social, political, and blood preju
dices were fused at white heat in the public crucible
together. When he went to the Church Seminary,
it was a matter of course that every member of the
faculty was a Republican, and that every one of his
classmates had come from a Republican household.
When, later on, he entered the ministry, the rule
was still incredulous of exceptions. One might as
well have looked in the Nedahma Conference for
a divergence of opinion on the Trinity as for a
difference in political conviction. Indeed, even
among the laity, Theron could not feel sure that
he had ever known a Democrat; that is, at all

75

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

closely. He understood very little about politics,
it is true. If he had been driven into a corner,
and forced to attempt an explanation of this tre
mendous partisan unanimity in which he had a
share, he would probably have first mentioned the
War, — the last shots of which were fired while he
was still in petticoats. Certainly his second reason,
however, would have been that the Irish were on
the other side.

He had never before had occasion to formulate,
even in his own thoughts, this tacit race and
religious aversion in which he had been bred. It
rose now suddenly in front of him, as he sauntered
from patch to patch of sunlight under the elms,
like some huge, shadowy, and symbolical monu
ment. He looked at it with wondering curiosity,
as at something he had heard of all his life, but
never seen before, — an abhorrent spectacle, truly !
The foundations upon which its dark bulk reared
itself were ignorance, squalor, brutality, and vice.
Pigs wallowed in the mire before its base, and
burrowing into this base were a myriad of narrow
doors, each bearing the hateful sign of a saloon,
and giving forth from its recesses of night the
sounds of screams and curses. Above were sculp
tured rows of lowering, ape-like faces from Nast's
and Keppler's cartoons, and out of these sprang
into the vague upper gloom, on the one side,
lamp-posts from which negroes hung by the neck,
and on the other gibbets for dynamiters and Molly

76

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Maguires ; and between the two glowed a spec
tral picture of some black-robed, tonsured men,
with leering satanic masks, making a bonfire of
the Bible in the public schools.

Theron stared this phantasm hard in the face,
and recognized it for a very tolerable embodiment
of what he had heretofore supposed he thought
about the Irish. For an instant, the sight of it
-made him shiver, as if the sunny May had of a
sudden lapsed into bleak December. Then he
smiled, and the bad vision went off into space.
He saw instead Father Forbes, in the white and
purple vestments, standing by poor MacEvoy's
bedside, with his pale, chiselled, luminous, uplifted
face, and he heard only the proud, confident
clanging of the girl's recital, — beatum Michaelem
Archangelum, beatum Joannem Baptistam, Petrum
et Paulum — em ! am ! urn ! — like strokes on a
great resonant alarm-bell, attuned for the hearing
of heaven. He caught himself on the very verge
of feeling that heaven must have heard.

Then he smiled again, and laid the matter aside,
with a parting admission that it had been undoubt
edly picturesque and impressive, and that it had
been a valuable experience to him to see it. At
least the Irish, with all their faults, must have a
poetic strain, or they would not have clung so tena
ciously to those curious and ancient forms. He
recalled having heard somewhere, or read, it might
be, that they were a people much given to songs

77

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and music. And the young lady, that very hand
some and friendly Miss Madden, had told him that
she was a musician ! He had a new pleasure in
turning this over in his mind. Of all the closed
doors which his choice of a career had left along
his pathway, no other had for him such a magical
fascination as that on which was graven the lute of
Orpheus. He knew not even the alphabet of
music, and his conceptions of its possibilities ran
but little beyond the best of the hymn-singing he
had heard at Conferences, yet none the less the
longing for it raised on occasion such mutiny in
his soul that more than once he had specifically
prayed against it as a temptation.

Dangerous though some of its tendencies might
be, there was no gainsaying the fact that a love for
music was in the main an uplifting influence, —
an attribute of cultivation. The world was the
sweeter and more gentle for it. And this brought
him to musing upon the odd chance that the two
people of Octavius who had given him the first
notion of polish and intellectual culture in the
town should be Irish. The Romish priest must
have been vastly surprised at his intrusion, yet had
been at the greatest pains to act as if it were quite
the usual thing to have Methodist ministers assist
at Extreme Unction. And the young woman, —
how gracefully, with what delicacy, had she com
prehended his position and robbed it of all its
possible embarrassments ! It occurred to him that

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

they must have passed, there in front of her home,
the very tree from which the luckless wheelwright
had fallen some hours before ; and the fact that she
had forborne to point it out to him took form in
his mind as an added proof of her refinement of
nature.

The midday dinner was a little more than ready
when Theron reached home, and let himself in by
the front door. On Mondays, owing to the mois
ture and " clutter " of the weekly washing in the
kitchen, the table was laid in the sitting-room, and
as he entered from the hall the partner of his joys
bustled in by the other door, bearing the steaming
platter of corned beef, dumplings, cabbages, and
carrots, with arms bared to the elbows, and a red
face. It gave him great comfort, however, to note
that there were no signs of the morning's displeas
ure remaining on this face ; and he immediately
remembered again those interrupted projects of
his about the piano and the hired girl.

" Well ! I 'd just about begun to reckon that I
was a widow," said Alice, putting down her fragrant
burden. There was such an obvious suggestion of
propitiation in her tone that Theron went around
and kissed her. He thought of saying something
about keeping out of the way because it was " Blue
Monday," but held it back lest it should sound like
a reproach.

" Well, what kind of a washerwoman does this one
turn out to be? " he asked, after they were seated..

79

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and he had invoked a blessing and was cutting
vigorously into the meat.

" Oh, so-so," replied Alice ; " she seems to be
particular, but she 's mortal slow. If I had n't stood
right over her, we shouldn't have had the clothes
out till goodness knows when. And of course she 's
Irish!"

"Well, what of that?" asked the minister, with
a fine unconcern.

Alice looked up from her plate, with knife and
fork suspended in air. " Why, you know we were
talking only the other day of what a pity it was that
none of our own people went out washing," she
said. " That Welsh woman we heard of could n't
come, after all ; and they say, too, that she pre
sumes dreadfully upon the acquaintance, being a
church member, you know. So we simply had to
fall back on the Irish. And even if they do go and
tell their priest everything they see and hear, why,
there 's one comfort, they can tell about us and
welcome. Of course I see to it she does n't snoop
around in here."

Theron smiled. "That's all nonsense about
their telling such things to their priests," he said
with easy confidence.

" Why, you told me so yourself, " replied Alice,
briskly. " And I 've always understood so, too ;
they 're bound to tell everything in confession.
That 's what gives the Catholic Church such a
tremendous hold. You Ve spoken of it often."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" It must have been by way of a figure of speech,"
remarked Theron, not with entire directness.
" Women are great hands to separate one's obser
vations from their context, and so give them mean
ings quite unintended. They are also great hands,"
he added genially, " or at least one of them is,
at making the most delicious dumplings in the world.
I believe these are the best even you ever made."

Alice was not unmindful of the compliment, but
her thoughts were on other things. " I should n't
like that woman's priest, for example," she said, " to
know that we had no piano."

" But if he comes and stands outside our house
every night and listens, — as of course he will,"
said Theron, with mock gravity, " it is only a
question of time when he must reach that conclu
sion for himself. Our only chance, however, is that
there are some sixteen hundred other houses for
him to watch, so that he may not get around to us
for quite a spell. Why, seriously, Alice, what on
earth do you suppose Father Forbes knows or cares
about our poor little affairs, or those of any other
Protestant household in this whole village ? He has
his work to do, just as I have mine, — only his is
ten times as exacting in everything except sermons,
— and you may be sure he is only too glad when
it is over each day, without bothering about things
that are none of his business."

" All the same, I 'm afraid of them," said Alice,
as if argument were exhausted.
6 81

CHAPTER VI

ON the following morning young Mr. Ware anti
cipated events by inscribing in his diary for the
day, immediately after breakfast, these remarks :
" Arranged about piano. Began work upon book."

The date indeed deserved to be distinguished
from its fellows. Theron was so conscious of its
importance that he not only prophesied in the little
morocco-bound diary which Alice had given him
for Christmas, but returned after he had got out
upon the front steps of the parsonage to have his
hat brushed afresh by her.

" Wonders will never cease," she said jocosely.
" With you getting particular about your clothes,
there is n't anything in this wide world that can't
happen now ! "

"One doesn't go out to bring home a piano
every day," he made answer. " Besides, I want to
make such an impression upon the man that he
will deal gently with that first cash payment down.
Do you know," he added, watching her turn the
felt brim under the wisp-broom's strokes, " I 'm
thinking some of getting me a regular silk stove
pipe hat."

82

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Why don't you, then? " she rejoined, but with
out any ring of glad acquiescence in her tone. He
fancied that her face lengthened a little, and he
instantly ascribed it to recollections of the way in
which the roses had been bullied out of her own
headgear.

" You are quite sure, now, pet," he made haste
to change the subject, " that the hired girl can wait
just as well as not until fall? "

" Oh, my, yes ! " Alice replied, putting the hat on
his head, and smoothing back his hair behind his
ears. " She 'd only be in the way now. You see,
with hot weather coming on, there won't be much
cooking. We '11 take all our meals out here, and
that saves so much work that really what remains is
hardly more than taking care of a bird-cage. And,
besides, not having her will almost half pay for the
piano."

" But when cold weather comes, you 're sure
you '11 consent? " he urged.

" Like a shot ! " she assured him, and, after a
happy little caress, he started out again on his
momentous mission.

" Thurston's " was a place concerning which
opinions differed in Octavius. That it typified
progress, and helped more than any other feature
of the village to bring it up to date, no one indeed
disputed. One might move about a great deal, in
truth, and hear no other view expressed. But then
again one might stumble into conversation with one

83

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

small storekeeper after another, and learn that they
united in resenting the existence of '•' Thurston's,"
as rival farmers might join to curse a protracted
drought. Each had his special flaming grievance.
The little dry-goods dealers asked mournfully how
they could be expected to compete with an estab
lishment which could buy bankrupt stocks at a
hundred different points, and make a profit if only
one-third of the articles were sold for more than
they would cost from the jobber? The little boot
and shoe dealers, clothiers, hatters, and furriers, the
small merchants in carpets, crockery, and furniture,
the venders of hardware and household utensils, of
leathern goods and picture-frames, of wall-paper,
musical instruments, and even toys, — all had the
same pathetically unanswerable question to pro
pound. But mostly they put it to themselves,
because the others were at " Thurston's."

The Rev. Theron Ware had entertained rather
strong views on this subject, and that only a week
or two ago. One of his first acquaintances in
Octavius had been the owner of the principal
book-store in the place, — a gentle and bald old
man who produced the complete impression of a
bibliophile upon what the slightest investigation
showed to be only a meagre acquaintance with
publishers' circulars. But at least he had the air
of loving his business, and the young minister had
enjoyed a long talk with, or rather, at him. Out
of this talk had come the information that the

84

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

store was losing money. Not even the stationery
department now showed a profit worth mentioning.
When Octavius had contained only five thousand
inhabitants, it boasted four book-stores, two of
them good ones. Now, with a population more
than doubled, only these latter two survived, and
they must soon go to the wall. The reason? It
was in a nutshell. A book which sold at retail
for one dollar and a half cost the bookseller
ninety cents. If it was at all a popular book,
" Thurston's " advertised it at eighty-nine cents, —
and in any case at a profit of only two or three
cents. Of course it was done to widen the estab
lishment's patronage, — to bring people into the
store. Equally of course, it was destroying the
book business and debauching the reading tastes
of the community. Without the profits from the
light and ephemeral popular literature of the sea
son, the book-store proper could not keep up its
stock of more solid works, and indeed could not
long keep open at all. On the other hand, " Thur
ston's " dealt with nothing save the demand of the
moment, and offered only the books which were
the talk of the week. Thus, in plain words, the
book trade was going to the dogs, and it was the
same with pretty nearly every other trade.

Theron was indignant at this, and on his return
home told Alice that he desired her to make no
purchases whatever at " Thurston's." He even
resolved to preach a sermon on the subject of the

85

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

modern idea of admiring the great for crushing
the small, and sketched out some notes for it
which he thought solved the problem of flaying
the local abuse without mentioning it by name.
They had lain on his desk now for ten days or
more, and on only the previous Friday he had
speculated upon using them that coming Sunday.

On this bright and cheerful Tuesday morning
he walked with a blithe step unhesitatingly down
the main street to "Thurston's," and entered
without any show of repugnance the door next to
the window wherein, flanked by dangling banjos
and key-bugles built in pyramids, was displayed
the sign, " Pianos on the Instalment Plan."

He was recognized by some responsible persons,
and treated with distinguished deference. They
were charmed with the intelligence that he desired
a piano, and fascinated by his wish to pay for it
only a little at a time. They had special terms
for clergymen, and made him feel as if these were
being extended to him on a silver charger by
kneeling admirers.

It was so easy to buy things here that he was a
trifle disturbed to find his flowing course inter
rupted by his own entire ignorance as to what
kind of piano he wanted. He looked at all they
had in stock, and heard them played upon. They
differed greatly in price, and, so he fancied, almost
as much in tone. It discouraged him to note,
however, that several of those he thought the

86

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

finest in tone were among the very cheapest in the
lot. Pondering this, and staring in hopeless puz
zlement from one to another of the big black shiny
monsters, he suddenly thought of something.

" I would rather not decide for myself," he
said, "I know so little about it. If you don't
mind, I will have a friend of mine, a skilled mu
sician, step in and make a selection. I have so
much confidence in — in her judgment." He
added hurriedly, " It will involve only a day or
two's delay."

The next moment he was sorry he had spoken.
What would they think when they saw the organist
of the Catholic church come to pick out a piano for
the Methodist parsonage? And how could he
decorously prefer the request to her to undertake
this task? He might not meet her again for ages,
and to his provincial notions writing would have
seemed out of the question. And would it not be
disagreeable to have her know that he was buying
a piano by part payments? Poor Alice's dread
of the washerwoman's gossip occurred to him, at
this, and he smiled in spite of himself. Then
all at once the difficulty vanished. Of course it
would come all right somehow. Everything did.

He was on firmer ground, buying the materials
for the new book, over on the stationery side.
His original intention had been to bestow this
patronage upon the old bookseller, but these
suavely smart people in " Thurston's " had had

8?

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the effect of putting him on his honor when they
asked, "Would there be anything else?" and he
had followed them unresistingly.

He indulged to the full his whim that everything
entering into the construction of "Abraham "
should be spick-and-span. He watched with his
own eyes a whole ream of broad glazed white
paper being sliced down by the cutter into single
sheets, and thrilled with a novel ecstasy as he laid
his hand upon the spotless bulk, so wooingly did
it invite him to begin. He tried a score of pens
before the right one came to hand. When a box
of these had been laid aside, with ink and pen
holders and a little bronze inkstand, he made a
sign that the outfit was complete. Or no — there
must be some blotting-paper. He had always
used those blotting-pads given away by insurance
companies, — his congregations never failed to
contain one or more agents, who had these to
bestow by the armful, — but the book deserved a
virgin blotter.

Theron stood by while all these things were
being tied up together in a parcel. The sugges
tion that they should be sent almost hurt him.
Oh, no, he would carry them home himself. So
strongly did they appeal to -his sanguine imagi
nation that he could not forbear hinting to the
man who had shown him the pianos and was now
accompanying him to the door that this package
under his arm represented potentially the price

88

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of the piano he was going to have. He did it in
a roundabout way, with one of his droll, hesitating
smiles. The man did not understand at all, and
Theron had not the temerity to repeat the remark.
He strode home with the precious bundle as fast
as he could.

" I thought it best, after all, not to commit
myself to a selection," he explained about the
piano at dinner-time. " In such a matter as this,
the opinion of an expert is everything. I am
going to have one of the principal musicians of
the town go and try them all, and tell me which
we ought to have."

" And while he 's about it," said Alice, " you
might ask him to make a little list of some of the
new music. I Ve got way behind the times, being
without a piano so long. Tell him not any very
difficult pieces, you know."

"Yes, I know," put in Theron, almost hastily,
and began talking of other things. His conver
sation was of the most rambling and desultory
sort, because all the while the two lobes of his
brain, as it were, kept up a dispute as to whether
Alice ought to have been told that this " principal
musician " was of her own sex. It would certainly
have been better, at the outset, he decided ; but
to mention it now would be to invest the fact with
undue importance. Yes, that was quite clear;
only the clearer it became, from one point of view,
the shadier it waxed from the other. The prob-

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

lem really disturbed the young minister's mind
throughout the meal, and his abstraction became
so marked at last that his wife commented upon it.

"A penny for your thoughts!" she said, with
cheerful briskness. This ancient formula of the
farm-land had always rather jarred on Theron.
It presented itself now to his mind as a peculiarly
aggravating banality.

" I am going to begin my book this afternoon,"
he remarked impressively. " There is a great
deal to think about."

It turned out that there was even more to think
about than he had imagined. After hours of soli
tary musing at his desk, or of pacing up and down
before his open book-shelves, Theron found the
first shadows of a May-day twilight beginning to
fall upon that beautiful pile of white paper, still
unstained by ink. He saw the book he wanted
to write before him, in his mental vision, much
more distinctly than ever, but the idea of begin
ning it impetuously, and hurling it off hot and
glowing week by week, had faded away like a
dream.

This long afternoon, spent face to face with a pro
ject born of his own brain but yesterday, yet already
so much bigger than himself, was really a most fruitful
time for the young clergyman. The lessons which
cut most deeply into our consciousness are those
we learn from our children. Theron, in this first
day's contact with the offspring of his fancy, found

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

revealed to him an unsuspected and staggering
truth. It was that he was an extremely ignorant
and rudely untrained young man, whose preten
sions to intellectual authority among any edu
cated people would be laughed at with deserved
contempt.

Strangely enough, after he had weathered the
first shock, this discovery did not dismay Theron
Ware. The very completeness of the conviction
it carried with it, saturated his mind with a feeling
as if the fact had really been known to him all
along. And there came, too, after a little, an almost
pleasurable sense of the importance of the revela
tion. He had been merely drifting in fatuous and
conceited blindness. Now all at once his eyes
were open ; he knew what he had to do. Igno
rance was a thing to be remedied, and he would
forthwith bend all his energies to cultivating his
mind till it should blossom like a garden. In this
mood, Theron mentally measured himself against
the more conspicuous of his colleagues in the Con
ference. They also were ignorant, clownishly igno
rant : the difference was that they were doomed
by native incapacity to go on all their lives with
out ever finding it out. It was obvious to him that
his case was better. There was bright promise in
the very fact that he had discovered his short
comings.

He had begun the afternoon by taking down
from their places the various works in his meagre

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

library which bore more or less relation to the task
in hand. The threescore books which constituted
his printed possessions were almost wholly from
the press of the Book Concern ; the few exceptions
were volumes which, though published elsewhere,
had come to him through that giant circulating
agency of the General Conference, and wore the
stamp of its approval. Perhaps it was the sight of
these half-filled shelves which started this day's
great revolution in Theron's opinions of himself.
He had never thought much before about owning
books. He had been too poor to buy many, and
the conditions of canvassing about among one's
parishioners which the thrifty Book Concern im
poses upon those who would have without buying,
had always repelled him. Now, suddenly, as he
moved along the two shelves, he felt ashamed at
their beggarly showing.

"The Land and the Book," in three portly
volumes, was the most pretentious of the aids
which he finally culled from his collection. Beside
it he laid out "Bible Lands," " Rivers and Lakes
of Scripture," " Bible Manners and Customs," the
" Genesis and Exodus " volume of Whedon's
Commentary, some old numbers of the " Methodist
Quarterly Review," and a copy of "Josephus"
which had belonged to his grandmother, and had
seen him through many a weary Sunday afternoon
in boyhood. He glanced casually through these,
one by one, as he took them down, and began to

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

fear that they were not going to be of so much
use as he had thought. Then, seating himself, he
read carefully through the thirteen chapters of
Genesis which chronicle the story of the founder
of Israel.

Of course he had known this story from his
earliest years. In almost every chapter he came
now upon a phrase or an incident which had
served him as the basis for a sermon. He had
preached about Hagar in the wilderness, about
Lot's wife, about the visit of the angels, about the
intended sacrifice of Isaac, about a dozen other
things suggested by the ancient narrative. Some
how this time it all seemed different to him. The
people he read about were altered to his vision.
Heretofore a poetic light had shone about them,
where indeed they had not glowed in a halo of
sanctincation. Now, by some chance, this light
was gone, and he saw them instead as untutored
and unwashed barbarians, rilled with animal lusts
and ferocities, struggling by violence and foul
chicanery to secure a foothold in a country which
did not belong to them, — all rude tramps and
robbers of the uncivilized plain.

The apparent fact that x-\bram was a Chaldean
struck him with peculiar force. How was it, he
wondered, that this had never occurred to him
before ? Examining himself, he found that he had
supposed vaguely that there had been Jews from
the beginning, or at least, say, from the flood.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

But, no, Abram was introduced simply as a citizen
of the Chaldean town of Ur, and there was no
hint of any difference in race between him and
his neighbors. It was specially mentioned that
his brother, Lot's father, died in Ur, the city of his
nativity. Evidently the family belonged there,
and were Chaldeans like the rest.

I do not cite this as at all a striking discovery,
but it did have a curious effect upon Theron Ware.
Up to that very afternoon, his notion of the kind
of book he wanted to write had been founded
upon a popular book called " Ruth the Moabitess,"
written by a clergyman he knew very well, the
Rev. E. Ray Mifflin. This model performance
troubled itself not at all with difficult points, but
went swimmingly along through scented summer
seas of pretty rhetoric, teaching nothing, it is true,
but pleasing a good deal and selling like hot cakes.
Now, all at once Theron felt that he hated that sort
of book. His work should be of a vastly different
order. He might fairly assume, he thought, that
if the fact that Abram was a Chaldean was new to
him, it would fall upon the world in general as a
novelty. Very well, then, there was his chance.
He would write a learned book, showing who the
Chaldeans were, and how their manners and
beliefs differed from, and influenced —

It was at this psychological instant that the
wave of self-condemnation suddenly burst upon
and submerged the young clergyman. It passed

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

again, leaving him staring fixedly at the pile of
books he had taken down from the shelves, and
gasping a little, as if for breath. Then the humor
ous side of the thing, perversely enough, appealed
to him, and he grinned feebly to himself at the
joke of his having imagined that he could write
learnedly about the Chaldeans, or anything else.
But, no, it should n't remain a joke ! His long
mobile face grew serious under the new resolve.
He would learn what there was to be learned
about the Chaldeans. He rose and walked up
and down the room, gathering fresh strength of
purpose as this inviting field of research spread
out its vistas before him. Perhaps — yes, he
would incidentally explore the mysteries of the
Moabitic past as well, and thus put the Rev. E.
Ray Mifflin to confusion on his own subject.
That would in itself be a useful thing, because
Mifflin wore kid gloves at the Conference, and
affected an intolerable superiority of dress and
demeanor, and there would be general satisfaction
among the plainer and worthier brethren at seeing
him taken down a peg.

Now for the first time there rose distinctly in
Theron's mind that casual allusion which Father
Forbes had made to the Turanians. He recalled,
too, his momentary feeling of mortification at not
knowing who the Turanians were, at the time.
Possibly, if he had probed this matter more
deeply, now as he walked and pondered in the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

little living-room, he might have traced the whole
of the afternoon's mental experiences to that
chance remark of the Romish priest. But this
speculation did not detain him. He mused in
stead upon the splendid library Father Forbes
must have.

" Well, how does the book come on ? Have
you got to 'my lady Keturah ' yet?'"

It was Alice who spoke, opening the door from
the kitchen, and putting in her head with a pre
tence of great and solemn caution, but with a cor
recting twinkle in her eyes.

" I have n't got to anybody yet," answered
Theron, absently. " These big things must be
approached slowly."

" Come out to supper, then, while the beans are
hot," said Alice.

The young minister sat through this other meal,
again in deep abstraction. His wife pursued her
little pleasantry about Keturah, the second wife,
urging him with mock gravity to scold her roundly
for daring to usurp Sarah's place, but Theron
scarcely heard her, and said next to nothing. He
ate sparingly, and fidgeted in his seat, waiting with
obvious impatience for the finish of the meal. At
last he rose abruptly.

" I Ve got a call to make, — something with
reference to the book," he said. " I '11 run out
now, I think, before it gets dark."

He put on his hat, and strode out of the house

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

as if his errand was of the utmost urgency. Once
upon the street, however, his pace slackened.
There was still a good deal of daylight outside,
and he loitered aimlessly about, walking with bowed
head and hands clasped behind him, until dusk
fell. Then he squared his shoulders, and started
straight as the crow flies toward the residence of
Father Forbes.

97

CHAPTER VII

THE new Catholic church was the largest and
most imposing public building in Octavius. Even
in its unfinished condition, with a bald roofing of
weather-beaten boards marking on the stunted
tower the place where a spire was to begin .later
on, it dwarfed every other edifice of the sort in
the town, just as it put them all to shame in the
matter of the throngs it drew, rain or shine, to its
services.

These facts had not heretofore been a source of
satisfaction to the Rev. Theron Ware. He had
even alluded to the subject in terms which gave his
wife the impression that he actively deplored the
strength and size of the Catholic denomination in
this new home of theirs, and was troubled in his
mind about Rome generally. But this evening he
walked along the extended side of the big struc
ture, which occupied nearly half the block, and
then, turning the corner, passed in review its wide-
doored, looming front, without any hostile emo
tions whatever. In the gathering dusk it seemed
more massive than ever before, but he found him
self only passively considering the odd statement
he had heard that all Catholic Church property

98

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

was deeded absolutely in the name of the Bishop
of the diocese.

Only a narrow passage-way separated the church
from the pastorate, a fine new brick residence stand
ing flush upon the street. Theron mounted the
steps, and looked about for a bell-pull. Search
revealed instead a little ivory button set in a ring
of metal work. He picked at this for a time with
his finger-nail, before he made out the injunction,
printed across it, to push. Of course ! how stupid
of him ! This was one of those electric bells he
had heard so much of, but which had not as yet
made their way to the class of homes he knew.
For custodians of a mediaeval superstition and
fanaticism, the Catholic clergy seemed very much
up to date. This bell made him feel rather more
a countryman than ever.

The door was opened by a tall gaunt woman,
who stood in black relief against the radiance of
the hall-way while Theron, choosing his words
with some diffidence, asked if the Rev. Mr.
Forbes was in.

" He is," came the hush-voiced answer. " He 's
at dinner, though."

It took the young minister a second or two to
bring into association in his mind this evening
hour and this midday meal. Then he began to
say that he would call again, — it was nothing
special, — but the woman suddenly cut him short
by throwing the door wide open.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"It's Mr. Ware, is it not?" she asked, in a
greatly altered tone. " Sure, he 'd not have you
go away. Come inside — do, sir ! — I '11 tell
him."

Theron, with a dumb show of reluctance, crossed
the threshold. He noted now that the woman,
who had bustled down the hall on her errand, was
gray-haired and incredibly ugly, with a dark sour
face, glowering black eyes, and a twisted mouth.
Then he saw that he was not alone in the hall- way.
Three men and two women, all poorly clad and
obviously working people, were seated in meek
silence on a bench beyond the hat-rack. They
glanced up at him for an instant, then resumed
their patient study of the linoleum pattern on the
floor at their feet.

" And will you kindly step in, sir? " the elderly
Gorgon had returned to ask. She led Mr. Ware
along the hall-way to a door near the end, and
opened it for him to pass before her.

He entered a room in which for the moment he
could see nothing but a central glare of dazzling
light beating down from a great shaded lamp upon
a circular patch of white table linen. Inside this
ring of illumination points of fire sparkled from
silver and porcelain, and two bars of burning
crimson tracked across the cloth in reflection from
tall glasses filled with wine. The rest of the room
was vague darkness, but the gloom seemed satu
rated with novel aromatic odors, the appetizing

100

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

scent of which bore clear relation to what Theron's
blinking eyes rested upon.

He was able now to discern two figures at the
table, outside the glowing circle of the lamp.
They had both risen, and one came toward him
with cordial celerity, holding out a white plump
hand in greeting. He took this proffered hand
rather limply, not wholly sure in the half-light that
this really was Father Forbes, and began once
more that everlasting apology to which he seemed
doomed in the presence of the priest. It was
broken abruptly off by the other's protesting
laughter.

" My dear Mr. Ware, I beg of you," the priest
urged, chuckling with hospitable mirth, "don't,
don't apologize ! I give you my word, nothing in
the world could have pleased us better than your
joining us here to-night. It was quite dramatic,
your coming in as you did. We were speaking of
you at that very moment. Oh, I forgot — let me
make you acquainted with my friend — my very
particular friend, Dr. Ledsmar. Let me take
your hat; pray draw up a chair. Maggie will
have a place laid for you in a minute."

" Oh, I assure you — I could n't think of it —
I 've just eaten my — my — dinner," expostulated
Theron. He murmured more inarticulate remon
strances a moment later, when the grim old
domestic appeared with plates, serviette, and table
ware for his use, but she went on spreading them

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

before him as if she heard nothing. Thus com
mitted against a decent show of resistance, the
young minister did eat a little here and there of
what was set before him, and was human enough
to regret frankly that he could not eat more. It
seemed to him very remarkable cookery, trans
figuring so simple a thing as a steak, for example,
quite out of recognition, and investing the humble
potato with a charm he had never dreamed of.
He wondered from time to time if it would be
polite to ask how the potatoes were cooked, so
that he might tell Alice.

The conversation at the table was not continu
ous, or even enlivened. After the lapses into
silence became marked, Theron began to suspect
that his refusal to drink wine had annoyed them, —
the more so as he had drenched a large section of
table-cloth in his efforts to manipulate a siphon
instead. He was greatly relieved, therefore, when
Father Forbes explained in an incidental way that
Dr. Ledsmar and he customarily ate their meals
almost without a word.

" It 's a philosophic fad of his," the priest went
on smilingly, " and I have fallen in with it for the
sake of a quiet life ; so that when we do have
company, — that is to say, once in a blue moon, —
we display no manners to speak of."

" I had always supposed — that is, I Ve always
heard — that it was more healthful to talk at
meals," said Theron. " Of course — what I mean

IO2

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

is — I took it for granted all physicians thought
so."

Dr. Ledsmar laughed. "That depends so
much upon the quality of the meals ! " he re
marked, holding his glass up to the light.

He seemed a man of middle age and an equable
disposition. Theron, stealing stray glances at him
around the lampshade, saw most distinctly of all a
broad, impressive dome of skull, which, though
obviously the result of baldness, gave the effect of
quite belonging to the face. There were gold-
rimmed spectacles, through which shone now and
again the vivid sparkle of sharp, alert eyes, and
there was a nose of some sort not easy to classify,
at once long and thick. The rest was thin hair
and short round beard, mouse-colored where the
light caught them, but losing their outlines in the
shadows of the background. Theron had not
heard of him among the physicians of Octavius.
He wondered if he might not be a doctor of
something else than medicine, and decided upon
venturing the question.

" Oh, yes, it is medicine," replied Ledsmar. " I
am a doctor three or four times over, so far as
parchments can make one. In some other re
spects, though, I should think I am probably less of
a doctor than anybody else now living. I have n't
practised — that is, regularly — for many years,
and I take no interest whatever in keeping abreast
of what the profession regards as its progress. I

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

know nothing beyond what was being taught in
the sixties, and that I am glad to say I have
mostly forgotten."

"Dear me!" said Theron. "I had always
supposed that Science was the most engrossing of
pursuits, — that once a man took it up he never
left it."

" But that would imply a connection between
Science and Medicine ! " commented the doctor.
" My dear sir, they are not even on speaking
terms."

" Shall we go upstairs? " put in the priest, rising
from his chair. " It will be more comfortable to
have our coffee there, — unless indeed, Mr. Ware,
tobacco is unpleasant to you? "

" Oh, my, no ! " the young minister exclaimed,
eager to free himself from the suggestion of being
a kill-joy. " I don't smoke myself ; but I am
very fond of the odor, I assure you."

Father Forbes led the way out. It could be
seen now that he wore a long house-gown of black
silk, skilfully moulded to his erect, shapely, and
rounded form. Though he carried this with the
natural grace of a proud and beautiful belle, there
was no hint of the feminine in his bearing, or in
the contour of his pale, firm-set, handsome face.
As he moved through the hall -way, the five people
whom Theron had seen waiting rose from their
bench, and two of the women began in humble
murmurs, " If you please, Father," and " Good-

104

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

evening to your Riverence ; " but the priest merely
nodded and passed on up the staircase, followed
by his guests. The people sat down on their
bench again.

A few minutes later, reclining at his ease in a
huge low chair, and feeling himself unaccountably
at home in the most luxuriously appointed and
delightful little room he had ever seen, the Rev.
Theron Ware sipped his unaccustomed coffee and
embarked upon an explanation of his errand.
Somehow the very profusion of scholarly symbols
about him — the great dark rows of encased and
crowded book-shelves rising to the ceiling, the
classical engravings upon the wall, the revolving
book-case, the reading-stand, the mass of littered
magazines, reviews, and papers at either end of
the costly and elaborate writing-desk — seemed to
make it the easier for him to explain without re
proach that he needed information about Abram.
He told them quite in detail the story of his book.

The two others sat watching him through a faint
haze of scented smoke, with polite encouragement
on their faces. Father Forbes took the added
trouble to nod understandingly at the various
points of the narrative, and when it was finished
gave one of his little approving chuckles.

"This skirts very closely upon sorcery," he said
smilingly. "Do you know, there is perhaps not
another man in the country who knows Assyriology
so thoroughly as our friend here, Dr. Ledsmar."

I05

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" That 's putting it too strong," remarked the
doctor. " I only follow at a distance, — a year or
two behind. But I daresay I can help you. You
are quite welcome to anything I have : my books
cover the ground pretty well up to last year.
Delitzsch is very interesting ; but Baudissin's ' Stu-
dien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte ' would
come closer to what you need. There are several
other important Germans, — Schrader, Bunsen,
Duncker, Hommel, and so on."

" Unluckily I — I don't read German readily,"
Theron explained with diffidence.

" That 's a pity," said the doctor, " because
they do the best work, — not only in this field, but
in most others. And they do so much that the
mass defies translation. Well, the best thing out
side of German of course is Sayce. I daresay you
know him, though."

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head mournfully.
" I don't seem to know any one," he murmured.

The others exchanged glances.

" But if I may ask, Mr. Ware," pursued the
doctor, regarding their guest with interest through
his spectacles, " why do you specially hit upon
Abraham ? He is full of difficulties, — enough,
just now, at any rate, to warn off the bravest
scholar. Why not take something easier? "

Theron had recovered something of his confi
dence. " Oh, no," he said, " that is just what at
tracts me to Abraham. I like the complexities

106

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and contradictions in his character. Take for
instance all that strange and picturesque episode
of Hagar : see the splendid contrast between the
craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt
and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightfor
ward godliness of his later years. No, all those
difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to
know — of course you would know — do those
German books, or the others, give anywhere any
additional details of the man himself and his say
ings and doings, — little things which help, you
know, to round out one's conception of the in
dividual?"

Again the priest and the doctor stole a furtive
glance across the young minister's head. It was
Father Forbes who replied.

" I fear that you are taking our friend Abraham
too literally, Mr. Ware," he said, in that gentle
semblance of paternal tones which seemed to go
so well with his gown. " Modern research, you
know, quite wipes him out of existence as an indi
vidual. The word ' Abram ' is merely an eponym, —
it means * exalted father.' Practically all the names
in the Genesis chronologies are what we call epony
mous. Abram is not a person at all : he is a
tribe, a sept, a clan. In the same way, Shem is
not intended for a man ; it is the name of a great
division of the human race. Heber is simply the
throwing back into allegorical substance, so to
speak, of the Hebrews; Heth of the Hittites;
Asshur of Assyria." 107

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" But this is something very new, this theory,
is n't it? " queried Theron.

The priest smiled and shook his head. " Bless
you, no ! My dear sir, there is nothing new.
Epicurus and Lucretius outlined the whole Dar
winian theory more than two thousand years ago.
As for this eponym thing, why Saint Augustine
called attention to it fifteen hundred years ago. In
his ' De Civitate Dei,' he expressly says of these
genealogical names, ' gentes non homines;'1 that
is, ' peoples, not persons.' It was as obvious to
him — as much a commonplace of knowledge —
as it was to Ezekiel eight hundred years before
him."

" It seems passing strange that we should not
know it now, then," commented Theron ; " I
mean, that everybody should n't know it."

Father Forbes gave a little purring chuckle.
"Ah, there we get upon contentious ground," he
remarked. " Why should ' everybody ' be sup
posed to know anything at all? What business is
it of ' everybody's ' to know things? The earth
was just as round in the days when people sup
posed it to be flat, as it is now. So the truth re
mains always the truth, even though you give a
charter to ten hundred thousand separate num
skulls to examine it by the light of their private
judgment, and report that it is as many different
varieties of something else. But of course that
whole question of private judgment versus author-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ity is No-Man's-Land for us. We were speaking
of eponyms."

"Yes," said Theron; "it is very interesting."
" There is a curious phase of the subject which
has n't been worked out much," continued the
priest. " Probably the Germans will get at that
too, sometime. They are doing the best Irish
work in other fields, as it is. I spoke of Heber
and Heth, in Genesis, as meaning the Hebrews
and the Hittites. Now my own people, the Irish,
have far more ancient legends and traditions than
any other nation west of Athens ; and you find in
their myth of the Milesian invasion and conquest
two principal leaders called Heber and Ith, or
Heth. That is supposed to be comparatively
modern, — about the time of Solomon's Temple.
But these independent Irish myths go back to the
fall of the Tower of Babel, and they have there an
ancestor, grandson of Japhet, named Fenius Farsa,
and they ascribe to him the invention of the alpha
bet. They took their ancient name of Feine, the
modern Fenian, from him. Oddly enough, that
is the name which the Romans knew the Phceni-

i

cians by, and to them also is ascribed the inven
tion of the alphabet. The Irish have a holy salmon
of knowledge, just like the Chaldean man-fish.
The Druids' tree-worship is identical with that of
the Chaldeans, — those pagan groves, you know,
which the Jews were always being punished for
building. You see, there is nothing new. Every-

109

thing is built on the ruins of something else. Just
as the material earth is made up of countless bil
lions of dead men's bones, so the mental world is
all alive with the ghosts of dead men's thoughts
and beliefs, the wraiths of dead races' faiths and
imaginings."

Father Forbes paused, then added with a twinkle
in his eye : " That peroration is from an old ser
mon of mine, in the days when I used to preach*
I remember rather liking it, at the time."

"But you still preach?" asked the Rev. Mr.
Ware, with lifted brows.

" No ! no more ! I only talk now and again,"
answered the priest, with what seemed a suggestion
of curtness. He made haste to take the con
versation back again. " The names of these dead-
and-gone things are singularly pertinacious, though.
They survive indefinitely. Take the modern name
Marmaduke, for example. It strikes one as pecu
liarly modern, up-to-date, does n't it ? Well, it is
the oldest name on earth, — thousands of years
older than Adam. It is the ancient Chaldean
Meridug, or Merodach. He was the young god
who interceded continually between the angry,
omnipotent Ea, his father, and the humble and
unhappy Damkina, or Earth, who was his mother.
This is interesting from another point of view,
because this Merodach or Marmaduke is, so far
as we can see now, the original prototype of our
* divine intermediary ' idea. I daresay, though,

no

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

that if we could go back still other scores of
centuries, we should find whole receding series
of types of this Christ-myth of ours."

Theron Ware sat upright at the fall of these
words, and flung a swift, startled look about the
room, — the instinctive glance of a man unex
pectedly confronted with peril, and casting des
perately about for means of defence and escape.
For the instant his mind was aflame with this
vivid impression, — that he was among sinister
enemies, at the mercy of criminals. He half
rose under the impelling stress of this feeling,
with the sweat standing on his brow, and his
jaw dropped in a scared and bewildered stare.

Then, quite as suddenly, the sense of shock
was gone ; and it was as if nothing at all had
happened. He drew a long breath, took another
sip of his coffee, and found himself all at once
reflecting almost pleasurably upon the charm of
contact with really educated people. He leaned
back in the big chair again, and smiled to show
these men of the world how much at his ease he
was. It required an effort, he discovered, but he
made it bravely, and hoped he was succeeding.

" It has n't been in my power to at all lay hold
of what the world keeps on learning nowadays
about its babyhood," he said. " All I have done
is to try to preserve an open mind, and to main
tain my faith that the more we know, the nearer
we shall approach the Throne."

in

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Dr. Ledsmar abruptly scuffled his feet on the
floor, and took out his watch. "I'm afraid — "
he began.

" No, no ! There 's plenty of time," remarked
the priest, with his soft half- smile and purring
tones. " You finish your cigar here with Mr. Ware,
and excuse me while I run down and get rid of
the people in the hall."

Father Forbes tossed his cigar- end into the
fender. Then he took from the mantel a strange
three-cornered black-velvet cap, with a dangling
silk tassel at the side, put it on his head, and went
out.

Theron, being left alone with the doctor, hardly
knew what to do or say. He took up a paper from
the floor beside him, but realized that it would be
impolite to go farther, and laid it on his knee.
Some trace of that earlier momentary feeling that
he was in hostile hands came back, and worried
him. He lifted himself upright in the chair,
and then became conscious that what really dis
turbed him was the fact that Dr. Ledsmar had
turned in his seat, crossed his legs, and was
contemplating him with a gravely concentrated
scrutiny through his spectacles.

This uncomfortable gaze kept itself up a long
way beyond the point of good manners ; but the
doctor seemed not to mind that at all.

112

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN Dr. Ledsmar finally spoke, it was in a
kindlier tone than the young minister had looked
for. " I had half a notion of going to hear
you preach the other evening, "he said; "but at
the last minute I backed out. I daresay I shall
pluck up the courage, sooner or later, and really
go. It must be fully twenty years since I last
heard a sermon, and I had supposed that that
would suffice for the rest of my life. But they
tell me that you are worth while ; and, for some
reason or other, I find myself curious on the
subject."

Involved and dubious though the compliment
might be, Theron felt himself flushing with satis
faction. He nodded his acknowledgment, and
changed the topic.

" I was surprised to hear Father Forbes say that
he did not preach," he remarked.

" Why should he? "asked the doctor, indiffer
ently. " I suppose he has n't more than fifteen
parishioners in a thousand who would understand
him if he did, and of these probably twelve would
join in a complaint to his Bishop about the hetero-
8 113

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

dox tone of his sermon. There is no point in his
going to all that pains, merely to incur that risk.
Nobody wants him to preach, and he has reached
an age where personal vanity no longer tempts him
to do so. What is wanted of him is that he should
be the paternal, ceremonial, authoritative head and
centre of his flock, adviser, monitor, overseer, elder
brother, friend, patron, seigneur, — whatever you
like, — everything except a bore. They draw the
line at that. You see how diametrically opposed
this Catholic point of view is to the Protestant."

" The difference does seem extremely curious to
me," said Theron. "Now, those people in the
hall — "

"Go on," put in the doctor, as the other
faltered hesitatingly. " I know what you were
going to say. It struck you as odd that he
should let them wait on the bench there, while
he came up here to smoke."

Theron smiled faintly. " I was thinking that
my — my parishioners would n't have taken it so
quietly. But of course — it is all so different!"

" As chalk from cheese ! " said Dr. Ledsmar,
lighting a fresh cigar. " I daresay every one you
saw there had come either to take the pledge, or
see to it that one of the others took it. That is
the chief industry in the hall, so far as I have ob
served. Now discipline is an important element
in the machinery here. Coming to take the
pledge implies that you have been drunk and are

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

now ashamed. Both states have their values, but
they are opposed. Sitting on that bench tends to
develop penitence to the prejudice of alcoholism.
But at no stage would it ever occur to the occu
pant of the bench that he was the best judge of
how long he was to sit there, or that his priest
should interrupt his dinner or general personal
routine, in order to administer that pledge.
Now, I daresay you have no people at all com
ing to ' swear off.' '

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head. " No ; if
a man with us got as bad as all that, he wouldn't
come near the church at all. He 'd simply drop
out, and there would be an end to it."

"Quite so," interjected the doctor. "That is
the voluntary system. But these fellows can't
drop out. There ?s no bottom to the Catholic
Church. Everything that 's in, stays in. If you don't
mind my saying so — of course I view you all im
partially from the outside — but it seems logical to
me that a church should exist for those who need
its help, and not for those who by their own pro
fession are so good already that it is they who help
the church. Now, you turn a man out of your
church who behaves badly : that must be on the
theory that his remaining in would injure the
church, and that in turn involves the idea that it
is the excellent character of the parishioners which
imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics' con
ception, you see, is quite the converse. Such vir-

"5

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

tue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak,
here in the church itself, and the parishioners
come and get some for themselves according to
their need for it. Some come every day, some
only once a year, some perhaps never between
their baptism and their funeral. But they all have
a right here, the professional burglar every whit as
much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation
is that they oughtn't to come under false pre
tences : the burglar is in honor bound not to pass
himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is
merely a moral obligation, established in the bur
glar's own interest. It does him no good to come
unless he feels that he is playing the rules of
the game, and one of these is confession. If he
cheats there, he knows that he is cheating nobody
but himself, and might much better have stopped
away altogether."

Theron nodded his head comprehendingly.
He had a great many views about the Romanish
rite of confession which did not at all square with
this statement of the case, but this did not seem a
specially fit time for bringing them forth. There
was indeed a sense of languid repletion in his
mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie
down for awhile. He contented himself with nod
ding again, and murmuring reflectively, "Yes, it
is all strangely different."

His tone was an invitation to silence ; and the
doctor turned his attention to the cigar, studying

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

its ash for a minute with an air of deep medita
tion, and then solemnly blowing out a slow series
of smoke-rings. Theron watched him with an in
dolent, placid eye, wondering lazily if it was, after
all, so very pleasant to smoke.

There fell upon this silence — with a softness
so delicate that it came almost like a progression
in the hush — the sound of sweet music. For a
little, strain and source were alike indefinite, — an
impalpable setting to harmony of the mellowed
light, the perfumed opalescence of the air, the lux
ury and charm of the room. Then it rose as by a
sweeping curve of beauty, into a firm, calm, severe
melody, delicious to the ear, but as cold in the
mind's vision as moonlit sculpture. It went on
upward with stately collectedness of power, till the
atmosphere seemed all alive with the trembling
consciousness of the presence of lofty souls, sternly
pure and pitilessly great.

Theron found himself moved as he had never
been before. He almost resented the discovery,
when it was presented to him by the prosaic,
mechanical side of his brain, that he was listening
to organ-music, and that it came through the open
window from the church close by. He would fain
have reclined in his chair and closed his eyes, and
saturated himself with the uttermost fulness of the
sensation. Yet, in absurd despite of himself, he
rose and moved over to the window.

Only a narrow alley separated the pastorate from
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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the church ; Mr. Ware could have touched with a
walking-stick the opposite wall. Directly facing
him was the arched and mullioned top of a great
window. A dim light from within shone through
the more translucent portions of the glass below,
throwing out faint little bars of party-colored radi
ance upon the blackness of the deep passage-way.
He could vaguely trace by these the outlines of
some sort of picture on the window. There were
human figures in it, and — yes — up here in the
centre, nearest him, was a woman's head. There
was a halo about it, engirdling rich, flowing waves
of reddish hair, the lights in which glowed like
flame. The face itself was barely distinguishable,
but its half- suggested form raised a curious sense
of resemblance to some other face. He looked at
it closely, blankly, the noble music throbbing
through his brain meanwhile.

" It 's that Madden girl ! " he suddenly heard a
voice say by his side. Dr. Ledsmar had followed
him to the window, and was close at his shoulder.

Theron's thoughts were upon the puzzling
shadowed lineaments on the stained glass. He
saw now in a flash the resemblance which had
baffled him. "It is like her, of course," he said.

" Yes, unfortunately, it is just like her," replied
the doctor, with a hostile note in his voice.
"Whenever I am dining here, she always goes in
and kicks up that racket. She knows I hate it."

" Oh, you mean that it is she who is playing,"

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

remarked Theron. " I thought you referred to —
at least — I was thinking of — "

His sentence died off in inconsequence. He
had a feeling that he did not want to talk with the
doctor about the stained-glass likeness. The music
had sunk away now into fragmentary and uncon
nected passages, broken here and there by abrupt
stops. Dr. Ledsmar stretched an arm out past
him and shut the window. " Let 's hear as little
of the row as we can," he said, and the two went
back to their chairs.

" Pardon me for the question," the Rev. Mr.
Ware said, after a pause which began to affect
him as constrained, " but something you said
about dining — you don't live here, then ? In
the house, I mean? "

The doctor laughed, — a characteristically abrupt,
dry little laugh, which struck Theron at once as
bearing a sort of black-sheep relationship to the
priest's habitual chuckle. " That must have been
puzzling you no end," he said, — " that notion that
the pastorate kept a devil's advocate on the prem
ises. No, Mr. Ware, I don't live here. I inhabit
a house of my own, — you may have seen it, — an
old-fashioned place up beyond the race-course,
with a sort of tower at the back, and a big garden.
But I dine here three or four times a week. It is
an old arrangement of ours. Vincent and I have
been friends for many years now. We are quite
alone in the world, we two, — much to our mutual

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

satisfaction. You must come up and see me some
time ; come up arid have a look over the books
we were speaking of."

"I am much obliged," said Theron, without
enthusiasm. The thought of the doctor by him
self did not attract him greatly.

The reservation in his tone seemed to interest
the doctor. " 1 suppose you are the first man I
have asked in a dozen years," he remarked, frankly
willing that the young minister should appreciate
the favor extended him. " It must be fully that
since anybody but Vincent Forbes has been under
my roof; that is, of my own species, I mean."

" You live there quite alone," commented
Theron.

" Quite — with my dogs and cats and lizards —
and my Chinaman. I must n't forget him;" The
doctor noted the inquiry in the other's lifted
brows, and smilingly explained. " He is my soli
tary servant. Possibly he might not appeal to you
much ; but I can assure you he used to interest
Octavius a great deal when I first brought him
here, ten years ago or so. He afforded occupa
tion for all the idle boys in the village for a twelve
month at least. They used to lie in wait for him
all day long, with stones or horse-chestnuts or
snowballs, according to the season. The Irish
men from the wagon-works nearly killed him once
or twice, but he patiently lived it all down. The
Chinaman has the patience to live everything

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

down, — the Caucasian races included. He
see us all to bed, will that gentleman with the
pigtail ! "

The music over in the church had lifted itself
again into form and sequence, and defied the
closed window. If anything, it was louder than
before, and the sonorous roar of the bass-pedals
seemed to be shaking the very walls. It was
something with a big-lunged, exultant, triumphing
swing in it, — something which ought to have been
sung on the battlefield at the close of day by the
whole jubilant army of victors. It was impossible
to pretend not to be listening to it ; but the doctor
submitted with an obvious scowl, and bit off the
tip of his third cigar with an annoyed air.

" You don't seem to care much for music,"
suggested Mr. Ware, when a lull came.

Dr. Ledsmar looked up, lighted match in hand.
" Say musicians ! " he growled. " Has it ever
occurred to you," he went on, between puffs at
the flame, " that the only animals who make the
noises we call music are of the bird family, — a de
based offshoot of the reptilian creation, — the very
lowest types of the vertebrata now in existence?
I insist upon the parallel among humans. I have
in my time, sir, had considerable opportunities
for studying close at hand the various orders of
mammalia who devote themselves to what they
describe as the arts. It may sound a harsh judg
ment, but I am convinced that musicians stand

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

on the very bottom rung of the ladder in the sub-
cellar of human intelligence, — even lower than
painters and actors."

This seemed such unqualified nonsense to the
Rev. Mr. Ware that he offered no comment what
ever upon it. He tried instead to divert his
thoughts to the stormy strains which rolled in
through the vibrating brickwork, and to picture
to himself the large, capable figure of Miss Madden
seated in the half-light at the organ-board, sway
ing to and fro in a splendid ecstasy of power as
she evoked at will this superb and ordered uproar.
But the doctor broke insistently in upon his
musings.

" All art, so-called, is decay," he said, raising
his voice. " When a race begins to brood on the
beautiful, — so-called, — it is a sign of rot, of get
ting ready to fall from the tree. Take the Jews, —
those marvellous old fellows, — who were never
more than a handful, yet have imposed the rule
of their ideas and their gods upon us for fifteen
hundred years. Why? They were forbidden by
their most fundamental law to make sculptures or
pictures. That was at a time when the Egyptians,
when the Assyrians, and other Semites, were run
ning to artistic riot. Every great museum in the
world now has whole floors devoted to statues
from the Nile, and marvellous carvings from the
palaces of Sargon and Assurbanipal. You can get
the artistic remains of the Jews during that whole

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

period into a child's wheelbarrow. They had the
sense and strength to penalize art ; they alone sur
vived. They saw the Egyptians go, the Assyrians
go, the Greeks go, the late Romans go, the Moors
in Spain go, — all the artistic peoples perish. They
remained triumphing over all. Now at last their
long-belated apogee is here ; their decline is at
hand. I am told that in this present generation
in Europe the Jews are producing a great lot of
young painters and sculptors and actors, just as
for a century they have been producing famous
composers and musicians. That means the end
of the Jews ! "

" What ! have yon only got as far as that ? '*
came the welcome interruption of a cheery voice.
Father Forbes had entered the room, and stood
looking down with a whimsical twinkle in his eye
from one to the other of his guests.

" You must have been taken over the ground at
a very slow pace, Mr. Ware," he continued, chuck
ling softly, " to have arrived merely at the collapse
of the New Jerusalem. I fancied I had given him
time enough to bring you straight up to the end
of all of us, with that Chinaman of his gently slap
ping our graves with his pigtail. That 's where the
doctor always winds up, if he 's allowed to run his
course."

" It has all been very interesting, extremely so,
I assure you," faltered Theron. It had become
suddenly apparent to him that he desired nothing

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

so much as to make his escape, — that he had in
deed only been waiting for the host's return to
do so.

He rose at this, and explained that he must be
going. No special effort being put forth to re
strain him, he presently made his way out, Father
Forbes hospitably following him down to the door,
and putting a very gracious cordiality into his
adieux.

The night was warm and black. Theron stood
still in it the moment the pastorate door had closed ;
the sudden darkness was so thick that it was as if
he had closed his eyes. His dominant sensation
was of a deep relief and rest after some undue
fatigue. It crossed his mind that drunken men
probably felt like that as they leaned against things
on their way home. He was affected himself, he
saw, by the weariness and half-nausea following a
mental intoxication. The conceit pleased him,
and he smiled to himself as he turned and took the
first homeward steps. It must be growing late,
he thought. Alice would be wondering as she
waited.

There was a street lamp at the corner, and as
he walked toward it he noted all at once that his
feet were keeping step to the movement of the
music proceeding from the organ within the church,
— a vaguely processional air, marked enough in
measure, but still with a dreamy effect. It be
came a pleasure to identify his progress with the

124

quaint rhythm of sound as he sauntered along.
He discovered, as he neared the light, that he
was instinctively stepping over the seams in the
flagstone sidewalk as he had done as a boy. He
smiled again at this. There was something ex
ceptionally juvenile and buoyant about his mood,
now that he examined it. He set it down as a
reaction from that doctor's extravagant and incen
diary talk. One thing was certain, — he would
never be caught up at that house beyond the race
course, with its reptiles and its Chinaman. Should
he ever even go to the pastorate again? He de
cided not to quite definitely answer that in the
negative, but as he felt now, the chances were all
against it.

Turning the corner, and walking off into the
shadows along the side of the huge church build
ing, Theron noted, almost at the end of the edifice,
a small door, — the entrance to a porch coming
out to the sidewalk, — which stood wide open. A
thin, pale, vertical line of light showed that ihe
inner door, too, was ajar.

Through this wee aperture the organ- music, re
duced and mellowed by distance, came to him
again with that same curious, intimate, personal
relation which had so moved him at the start,
before the doctor closed the window. It was as
if it was being played for him alone.

He paused for a doubting minute or two, with
bowed head, listening to the exquisite harmony

125

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

which floated out to caress and soothe and enfold
him. There was no spiritual, or at least pious,
effect in it now. He fancied that it must be
secular music, or, if not, then something adapted
to marriage ceremonies, — rich, vivid, passionate, a
celebration of beauty and the glory of possession,
with its ruling note of joy only heightened by soft,
wooing interludes, and here and there the tremor
of a fond, timid little sob.

Theron turned away irresolutely, half frightened
at the undreamt-of impression this music was mak
ing upon him. Then, all at once, he wheeled and
stepped boldly into the porch, pushing the inner
door open and hearing it rustle against its leathern
frame as it swung to behind him.

He had never been inside a Catholic church
before.

126

CHAPTER IX

JEREMIAH MADDEN was supposed to be probably
the richest man in Octavius. There was no doubt
at all about his being its least pretentious citizen.

The huge and ornate modern mansion which he
had built, putting to shame every other house in
the place, gave an effect of ostentation to the
Maddens as a family ; it seemed only to accen
tuate the air of humility which enveloped Jeremiah
as with a garment. Everybody knew some version
of the many tales afloat which, in a kindly spirit,
illustrated the incongruity between him and his
splendid habitation. Some had it that he slept in
the shed. Others told whimsical stories of his
sitting alone in the kitchen evenings, smoking his
old clay pipe, and sorrowing because the second
Mrs. Madden would not suffer the pigs and
chickens to come in and bear him company. But
no matter how comic the exaggeration, these
legends were invariably amiable. It lay in no
man's mouth to speak harshly of Jeremiah
Madden.

He had been born a Connemara peasant, and
he would die one. When he was ten years old he
had seen some of his own family, and most of his

127

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

neighbors, starve to death. He could remember
looking at the stiffened figure of a woman stretched
on the stones by the roadside, with the green stain
of nettles on her white lips. A girl five years or
so older than himself, also a Madden and distantly
related, had started in despair off across the moun
tains to the town where it was said the poor-law
officers were dealing out food. He could recall
her coming back next day, wild-eyed with hunger
and the fever ; the officers had refused her relief
because her bare legs were not wholly shrunken to
the bone. " While there 's a calf on the shank,
there 's no starvation," they had explained to her.
The girl died without profiting by this official
apothegm. The boy found it burned ineffaceably
upon his brain. Now, after a lapse of more than
forty years, it seemed the thing that he remem
bered best about Ireland.

He had drifted westward as an unconsidered,
unresisting item in that vast flight of the famine
years. Others whom he rubbed against in that
melancholy exodus, and deemed of much greater
promise than himself, had done badly. Somehow
he did well. He learned the wheelwright's trade,
and really that seemed all there was to tell. The
rest had been calm and sequent progression, —
steady employment as a journeyman first ; then
marriage and a house and lot ; the modest start
as a master ; the move to Octavius and cheap
lumber ; the growth of his business, always marked

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of late years stupendous, — all following naturally,
easily, one thing out of another. Jeremiah en
countered the idea among his fellows, now and
again, that he was entitled to feel proud of all this.
He smiled to himself at the thought, and then
sent a sigh after the smile. What was it all but
empty and transient vanity? The score of other
Connemara boys he had known — none very for
tunate, several broken tragically in prison or the
gutter, nearly all now gone the way of flesh — were
as good as he. He could not have it in his heart
to take credit for his success ; it would have been
like sneering over their poor graves.

Jeremiah Madden was now fifty-three, — a little
man of a reddened, weather-worn skin and a medi
tative, almost saddened, aspect. He had blue
eyes, but his scanty iron-gray hair showed raven
black in its shadows. The width and prominence
of his cheek-bones dominated all one's recollec
tions of his face. The long vertical upper-lip and
irregular teeth made, in repose, an unshapely
mouth ; its smile, though, sweetened the whole
countenance. He wore a fringe of stiff, steel-
colored beard, passing from ear to ear under his
chin. His week-day clothes were as simple as his
workaday manners, fitting his short black pipe and
his steadfast devotion to his business. On Sun
days he dressed with a certain rigor of respecta
bility, all in black, and laid aside tobacco, at least
to the public view. He never missed going to the
9 129

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

early Low Mass, quite alone. His family always
came later, at the ten o'clock High Mass.

There had been, at one time or another, a good
many members of this family. Two wives had
borne Jeremiah Madden a total of over a dozen
children. Of these there survived now only two
of the first Mrs. Madden's offspring — Michael and
Celia — and a son of the present wife, who had
been baptized Terence, but called himself Theo
dore. This minority of the family inhabited the
great new house on Main Street. Jeremiah went
every Sunday afternoon by himself to kneel in the
presence of the majority, there where they lay in
Saint Agnes' consecrated ground. If the weather
was good, he generally extended his walk through
the fields to an old deserted Catholic burial-field,
which had been used only in the first years after
the famine invasion, and now was clean forgotten.
The old wagon-maker liked to look over the prim
itive, neglected stones which marked the graves of
these earlier exiles. Fully half of the inscriptions
mentioned his County Galway, — there were two
naming the very parish adjoining his. The latest
date on any stone was of the remoter fifties.
They had all been stricken down, here in this
strange land with its bitter winters, while the
memory of their own soft, humid, gentle west-
coast air was fresh within them. Musing upon the
clumsy sculpture, with its " R. I. P.," or " Pray for
the Soul of," half to be guessed under the stain

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and moss of a generation, there would seem to
him but a step from this present to that heart
rending, awful past. What had happened between
was a meaningless vision, — as impersonal as the
passing of the planets overhead. He rarely had
an impulse to tears in the new cemetery, where his
ten children were. He never left this weed-grown,
forsaken old God's-acre dry- eyed.

One must not construct from all this the image
of a melancholy man, as his fellows met and knew
him. Mr. Madden kept his griefs, racial and indi
vidual, for his own use. To the men about him in
the offices and the shops he presented day after
day, year after year, an imperturbable cheeriness
of demeanor. He had been always fortunate in
the selection of lieutenants and chief helpers. Two
of these had grown now into partners, and were
almost as much a part of the big enterprise as
Jeremiah himself. They spoke often of their
inability to remember any unjust or petulant word
of his, — much less any unworthy deed. Once
they had seen him in a great rage, all the more
impressive because he said next to nothing. A
thoughtless fellow told a dirty story in the pres
ence of some apprentices ; and Madden, listening
to this, drove the offender implacably from his
employ. It was years now since any one who knew
him had ventured upon lewd pleasantries in his
hearing. Jokes of the sort which women might
hear he was very fond of, though he had not

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

much humor of his own. Of books he knew
nothing whatever, and he made only the most
perfunctory pretence now and again of reading
the newspapers.

The elder son Michael was very like his father,
— diligent, unassuming, kindly, and simple, — a
plain, tall, thin red man of nearly thirty, who
toiled in paper cap and rolled-up shirt-sleeves as
the superintendent in the saw-mill, and put on no
airs whatever as the son of the master. If there
was surprise felt at his not being taken into the
firm as a partner, he gave no hint of sharing it.
He attended to his religious duties with great zeal,
and was President of the Sodality as a matter of
course. This was regarded as his blind side ; and
young employees who cultivated it, and made
broad their phylacteries under his notice, certainly
had an added chance of getting on well in the
works. To some few whom he knew specially
well, Michael would confess that if he had had the
brains for it, he should have wished to be a priest.
He displayed no inclination to marry.

The other son, Terence, was some eight
years younger, and seemed the product of a
wholly different race. The contrast between
Michael's sandy skin and long gaunt visage and
this dark boy's handsome, rounded face, with its
prettily curling black hair, large, heavily fringed
brown eyes, and delicately modelled features, was
not more obvious than their temperamental sepa-

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ration. This second lad had been away for years
at school, — indeed, at a good many schools, for
no one seemed to manage to keep him long. He
had been with the Jesuits at Georgetown, with the
Christian Brothers at Manhattan ; the sectarian
Mt. St. Mary's and the severely secular Annapolis
had both been tried, and proved misfits. The
young man was home again now, and save that his
name had become Theodore, he appeared in no
wise changed from the beautiful, wilful, bold, and
showy boy who had gone away in his teens. He
was still rather small for his years, but so grace
fully moulded in form, and so perfectly tailored,
that the fact seemed rather an advantage than
otherwise. He never dreamed of going near the
wagon- works, but he did go a good deal — in fact,
most of the time — to the Nedahma Club. His
mother spoke often to her friends about her fears
for his health. He never spoke to his friends
about his mother at all.

The second Mrs. Madden did not, indeed,
appeal strongly to the family pride. She had been
a Miss Foley, a dress-maker, and an old maid.
Jeremiah had married her after a brief widower-
hood, principally because she was the sister of his
parish priest, and had a considerable reputation
for piety. It was at a time when the expansion of
his business was promising cercain wealth, and
suggesting the removal to Octavius. He was con
scious of a notion that his obligations to social

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

respectability were increasing ; it was certain that
the embarrassments of a motherless family were.
Miss Foley had shown a good deal of attention to
his little children. She was not ill-looking ; she
bore herself with modesty; she was the priest's
sister, — the niece once removed of a vicar-gen
eral. And so it came about.

Although those most concerned did not say so,
everybody could see from the outset the pity of its
ever having come about at all. The pious and
stiffly respectable priest's sister had been harmless
enough as a spinster. It made the heart ache to
contemplate her as a wife. Incredibly narrow-
minded, ignorant, suspicious, vain, and sour-
tempered, she must have driven a less equable
and well-rooted man than Jeremiah Madden to
drink or flight. He may have had his temptations,
but they made no mark on the even record of his
life. He only worked the harder, concentrating
upon his business those extra hours which another
sort of home-life would have claimed instead.
The end of twenty years found him a rich man,
but still toiling pertinaciously day by day, as if he
had his wage to earn. In the great house which
had been built to please, or rather placate, his
wife, he kept to himself as much as possible. The
popular story of his smoking alone in the kitchen
was more or less true ; only Michael as a rule sat
with him, too weak-lunged for tobacco himself, but
reading stray scraps from the papers to the lonely

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

old man, and talking with him about the works,
the while Jeremiah meditatively sucked his clay
pipe. One or two evenings in the week the twain
spent up in Celia's part of the house, listening with
the awe of simple, honest mechanics to the music
she played for them.

Celia was to them something indefinably less,
indescribably more, than a daughter and sister.
They could not think there had ever been any
thing like her before in the world ; the notion of
criticising any deed or word of hers would have
appeared to them monstrous and unnatural.

She seemed to have come up to this radiant and
wise and marvellously talented womanhood of hers,
to their minds, quite spontaneously. There had
been a little Celia, — a red-headed, sulky, mutinous
slip of a girl, always at war with her step-mother,
and affording no special comfort or hope to the
rest of the family. Then there was a long gap,
during which the father, four times a year, handed
Michael a letter he had received from the superi
oress of a distant convent, referring with cold for
mality to the studies and discipline by which Miss
Madden might profit more if she had been better
brought up, and enclosing a large bill. Then all
at once they beheld a big Celia, whom they spoke
of as being home again, but who really seemed
never to have been there before, — a tall, hand
some, confident young woman, swift of tongue and
apprehension, appearing to know everything there

was to be known by the most learned, able to
paint pictures, carve wood, speak in divers lan
guages, and make music for the gods, yet with it
all a very proud lady, one might say a queen.

The miracle of such a Celia as this impressed
itself even upon the step-mother. Mrs. Madden
had looked forward with a certain grim tightening
of her combative jaws to the home-coming of the
" red-head." She felt herself much more the fine
lady now than she had been when the girl went
away. She had her carriage now, and the mag
nificent new house was nearly finished, and she had
a greater number of ailments, and spent far more
money on doctor's bills, than any other lady in
the whole section. The flush of pride in her
greatest achievement up to date — having the
most celebrated of New York physicians brought
up to Octavius by special train — still prickled in
her blood. It was in all the papers, and the
admiration of the flatterers and " soft-sawdherers "
— wives of Irish merchants and smaller profes
sional men who formed her social circle — was
raising visions in her poor head of going next year
with Theodore to Saratoga, and fastening the
attention of the whole fashionable republic upon
the variety and resources of her invalidism. Mrs.
Madden's fancy did not run to the length of seeing
her step-daughter also at Saratoga ; it pictured
her still as the sullen and hated " red-head,"
moping defiantly in corners, or courting by her

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insolence the punishments which leaped against
their leash in the step-mother's mind to get at her.

The real Celia, when she came, fairly took Mrs.
Madden' s breath away. The peevish little plans
for annoyance and tyranny, the resolutions born of
ignorant and jealous egotism, found themselves
swept out of sight by the very first swirl of Celia's
dress-train, when she came down from her room
robed in peacock blue. The step-mother could
only stare.

Now, after two years of it, Mrs. Madden still
viewed her step-daughter with round-eyed uncer
tainty, not unmixed with wrathful fear. She
still drove about behind two magnificent horses ;
the new house had become almost tiresome by
familiarity ; her pre-eminence in the interested
minds of the Dearborn County Medical Society was
as towering as ever, but somehow it was all
different. There was a note of unreality nowadays
in Mrs. Donnelly's professions of wonder at her
bearing up under her multiplied maladies ; there
was almost a leer of mockery in the sympathetic
smirk with which the Misses Mangan listened to
her symptoms. Even the doctors, though they
kept their faces turned toward her, obviously did
not pay much attention ; the people in the street
seemed no longer to look at her and her equipage
at all. Worst of all, something of the meaning of
this managed- to penetrate her own mind. She
caught now and again a dim glimpse of herself as

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

others must have been seeing her for years, — as a
stupid, ugly, boastful, and bad-tempered old nui
sance. And it was always as if she saw this in a
mirror held up by Celia.

Of open discord there had been next to none.
Celia would not permit it, and showed this so
clearly from the start that there was scarcely need
for her saying it. It seemed hardly necessary for
her to put into words any of her desires, for that
matter. All existing arrangements in the Madden
household seemed to shrink automatically and
make room for her, whichever way she walked.
A whole quarter of the unfinished house set itself
apart for her. Partitions altered themselves ; door
ways moved across to opposite sides ; a recess
opened itself, tall and deep, for it knew not what
statue, — simply because, it seemed, the Lady Celia
willed it so.

When the family moved into this mansion, it
was with a consciousness that the only one who
really belonged there was Celia. She alone could
behave like one perfectly at home. It seemed
entirely natural to the others that she should do
just what she liked, shut them off from her portion
of the house, take her meals there if she felt dis
posed, and keep such hours as pleased her instant
whim. If she awakened them at midnight by her
piano, or deferred her breakfast to the late after
noon, they felt that it must be all right, since
Celia did it. She had one room furnished with

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only divans and huge, soft cushions, its walls
covered with large copies of statuary not too
strictly clothed, which she would suffer no one,
not even the servants, to enter. Michael fancied
sometimes, when he passed the draped entrance
to this sacred chamber, that the portiere smelt of
tobacco, but he would not have spoken of it, even
had he been sure. Old Jeremiah, whose estab
lished habit it was to audit minutely the expenses
of his household, covered over round sums to
Celia's separate banking account, upon the mere
playful hint of her holding her check-book up,
without a dream of questioning her.

That the step-mother had joy, or indeed any
thing but gall and wormwood, out of all this is
not to be pretended. There lingered along in
the recollection of the family some vague memo
ries of her having tried to assert an authority over
Celia's comings and goings at the outset, but
they grouped themselves as only parts of the gen
eral disorder of moving and settling, which a fort
night or so quite righted. Mrs. Madden still
permitted herself a certain license of hostile
comment when her step-daughter was not present,
and listened with gratification to what the women
of her acquaintance ventured upon saying in the
same spirit ; but actual interference or remonstrance
she never offered nowadays. The two rarely met,
for that matter, and exchanged only the baldest
and curtest forms of speech.

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Celia Madden interested all Octavius deeply.
This she must have done in any case, if only
because she was the only daughter of its richest
citizen. But the bold, luxuriant quality of her
beauty, the original and piquant freedom of her
manners, the stories told in gossip about her law
lessness at home, her intellectual attainments, and
artistic vagaries, — these were even more exciting.
The unlikelihood of her marrying any one — at
least any Octavian — was felt to add a certain
romantic zest to the image she made on the local
perceptions. There was no visible young Irish
man at all approaching the social and financial
standard of the Maddens ; it was taken for granted
that a mixed marriage was quite out of the ques
tion in this case. She seemed to have more
business about the church than even the priest.
She was always playing the organ, or drilling the
choir, or decorating the altars with flowers, or
looking over the robes of the acolytes for rents
and stains, or going in or out of the pastorate.
Clearly this was not the sort of girl to take a
Protestant husband.

The gossip of the town concerning her was,
however, exclusively Protestant. The Irish spoke
of her, even among themselves, but seldom. There
was no occasion for them to pretend to like her :
they did not know her, except in the most distant
and formal fashion. Even the members of the
choir, of both sexes, had the sense of being held

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away from her at haughty arm's length. No
single parishioner dreamed of calling her friend.
But when they referred to her, it was always with
a cautious and respectful reticence. For one
thing, she was the daughter of their chief man, the
man they most esteemed and loved. For another,
reservations they may have had in their souls about
her touched close upon a delicately sore spot. It
could not escape their notice that their Protestant
neighbors were watching her with vigilant curiosity,
and with a certain tendency to wink when her
name came into conversation along with that of
Father Forbes. It had never yet got beyond a
tendency, — the barest fluttering suggestion of a
tempted eyelid, — but the whole Irish population
of the place felt themselves to be waiting, with
clenched fists but sinking hearts, for the wink
itself.

The Rev. Theron Ware had not caught even the
faintest hint of these overtures to suspicion.

When he had entered the huge, dark, cool vault
of the church, he could see nothing at first but a
faint light up over the gallery, far at the other end.
Then, little by little, his surroundings shaped them
selves out of the gloom. To his right was a rail
and some broad steps rising toward a softly con
fused mass of little gray vertical bars and the pale
twinkle of tiny spots of gilded reflection, which he
made out in the dusk to be the candles and trap
pings of the altar. Overhead the great arches

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

faded away from foundations of dimly discernible
capitals into utter blackness. There was a strange
medicinal odor — as of cubeb cigarettes — in the
air.

After a little pause, he tiptoed noiselessly up the
side aisle toward the end of the church, — toward
the light above the gallery. This radiance from a
single gas-jet expanded as he advanced, and
spread itself upward over a burnished row of
monster metal pipes, which went towering into the
darkness like giants. They were roaring at him
now, — a sonorous, deafening, angry bellow, whicri
made everything about him vibrate. The gallery
balustrade hid the keyboard and the organist from
view. There were only these jostling brazen tubes,
as big round as trees and as tall, trembling with
their own furious thunder. It was for all the
world as if he had wandered into some vast tragi
cal, enchanted cave, and was being drawn against
his will — like fascinated bird and python —
toward fate at the savage hands of these swollen
and enraged genii.

He stumbled in the obscure light over a kneel-
ing-stool, making a considerable racket. On the
instant the noise from the organ ceased, and he
saw the black figure of a woman rise above the
gallery-rail and look down.

"Who is it?" the indubitable voice of Miss
Madden demanded sharply.

Theron had a sudden sheepish notion of turning
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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and running. With the best grace he could sum
mon, he called out an explanation instead.

" Wait a minute. I 'm through now. I 'm com
ing down," she returned. He thought there was
a note of amusement in her tone.

She came to him a moment later, accompanied
by a thin, tall man, whom Theron could barely see
in the dark, now that the organ-light too was gone.
This man lighted a match or two to enable them
to make their way out.

When they were on the sidewalk, Celia spoke :
" Walk on ahead, Michael ! " she said. " I have
some matters to speak of with Mr. Ware."

14-5

CHAPTER X

"WELL, what did you think of Dr. Ledsmar? "
The girl's abrupt question came as a relief to
Theron. They were walking along in a darkness
so nearly complete that he could see next to noth
ing of his companion. For some reason, this
seemed to suggest a sort of impropriety. He had
listened to the footsteps of the man ahead, — whom
he guessed to be a servant, — and pictured him as
intent upon getting up early next morning to tell
everybody that the Methodist minister had stolen
into the Catholic church at night to walk home
with Miss Madden. That was going to be very
awkward, — yes, worse than awkward ! It might
mean ruin itself. She had mentioned aloud that
she had matters to talk over with him : that of
course implied confidences, and the man might
put heaven only knew what construction on that.
It was notorious that servants did ascribe the very
worst motives to those they worked for. The bare
thought of the delight an Irish servant would have
in also dragging a Protestant clergyman into the
thing was sickening. And what could she want to
talk to him about, anyway ? The minute of silence
stretched itself out upon nis nerves into an inter-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

minable period of anxious unhappiness. Her
mention of the doctor at last somehow seemed to
lighten the situation.

" Oh, I thought he was very smart," he made
haste to answer. " Would n't it be better — to —
keep close to your man ? He — may — think
we 've gone some other way."

" It would n't matter if he did," remarked Celia.
She appeared to comprehend his nervousness and
take pity on it, for she added, "It is my brother
Michael, as good a soul as ever lived. He is quite
used to my ways."

The Rev. Mr. Ware drew a long comforting
breath. " Oh, I see ! He went with you to —
bring you home."

" To blow the organ," said the girl in the dark,
correctingly. " But about that doctor ; did you
like him ? "

" Well," Theron began, " < like ' is rather a
strong word for so short an acquaintance. He
talked very well ; that is, fluently. But he is so
different from any other man I have come into
contact with that — "

" What I wanted you to say was that you hated
him," put in Celia, firmly.

" I don't make a practice of saying that of any
body," returned Theron, so much at his ease again
that he put an effect of gentle, smiling reproof
into the words. "And why specially should I
make an exception for him ? "
10 T45

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Because he 's a beast ! "

Theron fancied that he understood. " I noticed
that he seemed not to have much of an ear for
music," he commented, with a little laugh. " He
shut down the window when you began to play.
His doing so annoyed me, because I — I wanted
very much to hear it all. I never heard such
music before. I — I came into the church to
hear more of it ; but then you stopped ! "

" I will play for you some other time," Celia
said, answering the reproach in his tone. " But
to-night I wanted to talk with you instead."

She kept silent, in spite of this, so long now
that Theron was on the point of jestingly asking
when the talk was to begin. Then she put a ques
tion abruptly, —

" It is a conventional way of putting it, but are
you fond of poetry, Mr. Ware ? "

"Well, yes, I suppose I am," replied Theron,
much mystified. " I can't say that I am any great
judge ; but I like the things that I like — and — "

" Meredith," interposed Celia, " makes one of
his women, Emilia in England, say that poetry is
like talking on tiptoe ; like animals in cages,
always going to one end and back again. Does it
impress you that way? "

" I don't know that it does," said he, dubiously.
It seemed, however, to be her whim to talk liter
ature, and he went on : "I 've hardly read Mere
dith at all. I once borrowed his ' Lucile,' but

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

somehow I never got interested in it. I heard a
recitation of his once, though, — a piece about a
dead wife, and the husband and another man quar
relling as to whose portrait was in the locket on
her neck, and of their going up to settle the dis
pute, and finding that it was the likeness of a third
man, a young priest, — and though it was very
striking, it did n't give me a thirst to know his
other poems. I fancied I should n't like them.
But I daresay I was wrong. As I get older, I find
that I take less narrow views of literature, — that
is, of course, of light literature, — and that —
that—"

Celia mercifully stopped him. " The reason I
asked you was — " she began, and then herself
paused. " Or no, — never mind that, — tell me
something else. Are you fond of pictures, statuary,
the beautiful things of the world? Do great
works of art, the big achievements of the big
artists, appeal to you, stir you up?"

" Alas ! that is something I can only guess at
myself," answered Theron, humbly. " I have al
ways lived in little places. I suppose, from your
point of view, I have never seen a good painting
in my life. I can only say this, though, — that it
has always weighed on my mind as a great and
sore deprivation, this being shut out from knowing
what others mean when they talk and write about
ait. Perhaps that may help you to get at what
you are after. If I ever went to New York, I feel

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

that one of the first things I should do would be
to see all the picture galleries ; is that what you
meant ? And — would you mind telling me —
why you — ? "

" Why I asked you?" Celia supplied his halt
ing question. " No, I don't mind. I have a
reason for wanting to know — to satisfy myself
whether I had guessed rightly or not — about the
kind of man you are. I mean in the matter of
temperament and bent of mind and tastes."

The girl seemed to be speaking seriously, and
without intent to offend. Theron did not find any
comment ready, but walked along by her side,
wondering much what it was all about.

" I daresay you think me ' too familiar on short
acquaintance,'" she continued, after a little.

" My dear Miss Madden ! " he protested per
functorily.

" No ; it is a matter of a good deal of impor
tance," she went on. " I can see that you are
going to be thrown into friendship, close contact,
with Father Forbes. He likes you, and you can't
help liking him. There is nobody else in this raw,
overgrown, empty-headed place for you and him
to like, — nobody except that man, that Dr. Leds-
mar. And if you like him, I shall hate you ! He
has done mischief enough already. I am count
ing on you to help undo it, and to choke him off
from doing more. It would be different if you
were an ordinary Orthodox minister, all encased

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

like a terrapin in prejudices and nonsense. Of
course, if you had been that kind, we should never
have got to know you at all. But when I saw you
in McEvoy's cottage there, it was plain that you
were one of us, — I mean a man, and not a mar
ionette or a mummy. I am talking very frankly
to you, you see. I want you on my side, against
that doctor and his heartless, bloodless science."

" I feel myself very heartily on your side,"
replied Theron. She had set their progress at a
slower pace, now that the lights of the main street
were drawing near, as if to prolong their talk. All
his earlier reservations had fled. It was almost as
if she were a parishioner of his own. " I need
hardly tell you that the doctor's whole attitude
toward — toward revelation — was deeply repug
nant to me. It does n't make it any the less hate
ful to call it science. I am afraid, though," he went
on hesitatingly, "that there are difficulties in the
way of my helping, as you call it. You see, the
very fact of my being a Methodist minister, and
his being a Catholic priest, rather puts my interfer
ence out of the question."

" No ; that does n't matter a button," said Celia,
lightly. " None of us think of that at all."

"There is the other embarrassment, then,"
pursued Theron, diffidently, "that Father Forbes
is a vastly broader and deeper scholar — in all
these matters — than I am. How could I pos
sibly hope to influence him by my poor argu-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ments? I don't know even the alphabet of the
language he thinks in, — on these subjects, I
mean."

"Of course you don't!" interposed the girl,
with a confidence which the other, for all his
meekness, rather winced under. " That was n't
what I meant at all. We don't want arguments
from our friends : we want sympathies, sensibilities,
emotional bonds. The right person's silence is
worth more for companionship than the wisest
talk in the world from anybody else. It isn't
your mind that is needed here, or what you know ;
it is your heart, and what you feel. You are full
of poetry, of ideals, of generous, unselfish im
pulses. You see the human, the warm-blooded
side of things. That is what is really valuable.
That is how you can help ! "

" You overestimate me sadly," protested Theron,
though with considerable tolerance for her error in
his tone. " But you ought to tell me something
about this Dr. Ledsmar. He spoke of being an
old friend of the pr — of Father Forbes."

" Oh, yes, they 've always known each other ; that
is, for many years. They were professors together
in a college once, heaven only knows how long
ago. Then they separated, — I fancy they quar
relled, too, before they parted. The doctor came
here, where some relative had left him the place
he lives in. Then in time the Bishop chanced to
send Father Forbes here, — that was about three

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

years ago, — and the two men after a while renewed
their old relations. They dine together; that is
the doctor's stronghold. He knows more about
eating than any other man alive, I believe. He
studies it as you would study a language. He
has taught old Maggie, at the pastorate there, to
cook like the mother of all the Delmonicos. And
while they sit and stuff themselves, or loll about
afterward like gorged snakes, they think it is
smart to laugh at all the sweet and beautiful things
in life, and to sneer at people who believe in
ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a
fortuitous product of fermentation, and twaddle of
that sort. It makes me sick ! "

" I can readily see," said Theron, with sym
pathy, " how such a cold, material, and infidel
influence as that must shock and revolt an essen
tially religious temperament like yours."

Miss Madden looked up at him. They had
turned into the main street, and there was light
enough for him to detect something startlingly like
a grin on her beautiful face.

" But I 'm not religious at all, you know," he
heard her say. " I 'm as Pagan as — anything !
Of course there are forms to be observed, and so
on ; I rather like them than otherwise. I can
make them serve very well for my own system ;
for I am myself, you know, an out-an-out Greek."

" Why, I had supposed that you were full-
blooded Irish," the Rev. Mr. Ware found himself

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

remarking, and then on the instant was over
whelmed by the consciousness that he had said a
foolish thing. Precisely where the folly lay he did
not know, but it was impossible to mistake the ges
ture of annoyance which his companion had in
stinctively made at his words. She had widened
the distance between them now, and quickened
her step. They went on in silence till they were
within a block of her house. Several people had
passed them who Theron felt sure must have
recognized them both.

" What I meant was," the girl all at once began,
drawing nearer again, and speaking with patient
slowness, " that I find myself much more in sym
pathy with the Greek thought, the Greek theology
of the beautiful and the strong, the Greek phil
osophy of life, and all that, than what is taught
nowadays. Personally, I take much more stock in
Plato than I do in Peter. But of course it is a
wholly personal affair ; I had no business to bother
you with it. And for that matter, I ought n't to
have troubled you with any of our — "

"I assure you, Miss Madden ! " the young min
ister began, with fervor.

" No," she broke in, in a resigned and even
downcast tone ; " let it all be as if I had n't spoken.
Don't mind anything I have said. If it is to be, it
will be. You can't say more than that, can you?"

She looked into his face again, and her large
eyes produced an impression of deep melancholy,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

which Theron found himself somehow impelled to
share. Things seemed all at once to have become
very sad indeed.

" It is one of my unhappy nights," she ex
plained, in gloomy confidence. " I get them
every once in a while, — as if some vicious planet
or other was crossing in front of my good star,
— and then I 'm a caution to snakes. I shut my
self up — that 's the only thing to do — and have
it out with myself. I did n't know but the organ-
music would calm me down, but it hasn't. I
sha'n't sleep a wink to-night, but just rage around
from one room to another, piling all the cushions
from the divans on to the floor, and then kicking
them away again. Do you ever have fits like
that?"

Theron was able to reply with a good con
science in the negative. It occurred to him to
add, with jocose intent : " I am curious to know,
do these fits, as you call them, occupy a prominent
part in Grecian philosophy as a general rule? "

Celia gave a little snort, which might have sig
nified amusement, but did not speak until they
were upon her own sidewalk. " There is my
brother, waiting at the gate," she said then, briefly.

"Well, then, I will bid you good-night here, I
think," Theron remarked, coming to a halt, and
offering his hand. " It must be getting very late,
and my — that is — I have to be up particularly
early to-morrow. So good-night; I hope you

153

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

will be feeling ever so much better in spirits in
the morning."

"Oh, that doesn't matter," replied the girl,
listlessly. " It 's a very paltry little affair, this life
of ours, at the best of it. Luckily it 's soon done
with, — like a bad dream."

"Tut ! tut ! I won't have you talk like that ! "
interrupted Theron, with a swift and smart assump
tion of authority. " Such talk is n't sensible, and
it isn't good. I have no patience with it ! "

" Well, try and have a little patience with me,
anyway, just for to-night," said Celia, taking
the reproof with gentlest humility, rather to her
censor's surprise. " I really am unhappy to-night,
Mr. Ware, very unhappy. It seems as if all at
once the world had swelled out in size a thousand
fold, and that poor me had dwindled down to the
merest wee little red-headed atom, — the most
helpless and forlorn and lonesome of atoms at
that." She seemed to force a sorrowful smile on
her face as she added : " But all the same it has
done me good to be with you, — I am sure it has,

— and I daresay that by to-morrow I shall be
quite out of the blues. Good-night, Mr. Ware.
Forgive my making such an exhibition of myself.
I was going to be such a fine early Greek, you
know, and I have turned out only a late Milesian,

— quite of the decadence. I shall do better
next time. And good-night again, — and ever so
many thanks."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

She was walking briskly away toward the gate
now, where the shadowy Michael still patiently
stood. Theron strode off in the opposite direc
tion, taking long, deliberate steps, and bowing his
head in thought. He had his hands behind his
back, as was his wont, and the sense of their
recent contact with her firm, ungloved hands was,
curiously enough, the thing which pushed itself
uppermost in his mind. There had been a frank,
almost manly vigor in her grasp ; he said to him
self that of course that came from her playing so
much on the keyboard ; the exercise naturally
would give her large, robust hands.

Suddenly he remembered about the piano ; he
had quite forgotten to solicit her aid in selecting
it. He turned, upon the impulse, to go back.
She had not entered the gate as yet, but stood,
shiningly visible under the street lamp, on the
sidewalk, and she was looking in his direction.
He turned again like a shot, and started home
ward.

The front door of the parsonage was unlocked,
and he made his way on tiptoe through the un-
lighted hall to the living-room. The stuffy air
here was almost suffocating with the evil smell of a
kerosene lamp turned down too low. Alice sat
asleep in her old farmhouse rocking-chair, with an
inelegant darning-basket on the table by her side.
The whole effect of the room was as bare and
squalid to Theron's newly informed eye as the

'55

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

atmosphere was offensive to his nostrils. He
coughed sharply, and his wife sat up and looked
at the clock. It was after eleven.

"Where on earth have you been?" she asked,
with a yawn, turning up the wick of her sewing-
lamp again.

" You ought never to turn down a light like that,"
said Theron, with a complaining note in his voice.
" It smells up the whole place. I never dreamed
of your sitting up for me like this. You ought to
have gone to bed."

" But how could I guess that you were going to
be so late?" she retorted. "And you haven't
told me where you were. Is this book of yours
going to keep you up like this right along?"

The episode of the book was buried in the
young minister's mind beneath such a mass of
subsequent experiences that it required an effort
for him to grasp what she was talking about. It
seemed as if months had elapsed since he was in
earnest about that book ; and yet he had left the
house full of it only a few hours before. He shook
his wits together, and made answer, —

" Oh, bless you, no ! Only there arose a very
curious question. You have no idea, literally no
conception, of the interesting and important prob
lems which are raised by the mere fact of Abraham
leaving the city of Ur. It 's amazing, I assure
you. I hadn't realized it myself."

" Well," remarked Alice, rising, — and with

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

good-humor and petulance struggling sleepily in
her tone, — "all I Ve got to say is, that if Abra
ham hasn't anything better to do than to keep
young ministers of the gospel out, goodness knows
where, till all hours of the night, I wish to gra
cious he 'd stayed in the city of Ur right straight
along."

" You have no idea what a scholarly man Dr.
Ledsmar is," Theron suddenly found himself in
spired to volunteer. " He has the most marvellous
collection of books, — a whole library devoted to
this very subject, — and he has put them all quite
freely at my disposal. Extremely kind of him,
isn't it?"

"Ledsmar? Ledsmar?" queried Alice. "I
don't seem to remember the name. He isn't
the little man with the birthmark, who sits in the
pew behind the Lovejoys, is he? I think some
one said he was a doctor."

"Yes, a horse doctor!" said Theron, with a
sniff. " No ; you have n't seen this Dr. Ledsmar
at all. I — I don't know that he attends any
church regularly. I scraped his acquaintance quite
by accident. He is really a character. He lives
in the big house, just beyond the race-course, you
know — the one with the tower at the back — "

"No, I don't know. How should I? I've
hardly poked my nose outside of the yard since
I have been here."

"Well, you shall go," said the husband, con-

*57 *

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

solingly. " You have been cooped up here too
much, poor girl. I must take you out more,
really. I don't know that I could take you
to the doctor's place — without an invitation,
I mean. He is very queer about some things.
He lives there all alone, for instance, with only a
Chinaman for a servant. He told me I was almost
the only man he had asked under his roof for
years. He is n't a practising physician at all, you
know. He is a scientist ; he makes experiments
with lizards — and things."

"Theron," the wife said, pausing lamp in hand
on her way to the bedroom, " do you be careful,
now ! For all you know this doctor may be a
loose man, or pretty near an infidel. You Ve got
to be mighty particular in such matters, you know,
or you '11 have the trustees down on you like a
' thousand of bricks.' "

" I will thank the trustees to mind their own
business," said Theron, stiffly, and the subject
dropped.

The bedroom window upstairs was open, and
upon the fresh night air was borne in the shrill,
jangling sound of a piano, being played off some
where in the distance, but so vehemently that the
noise imposed itself upon the silence far and wide.
Theron listened to this as he undressed. It pro
ceeded from the direction of the main street, and
he knew, as by instinct, that it was the Madden
girl who was playing. The incongruity of the hour

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

escaped his notice. He mused instead upon the wild
and tropical tangle of moods, emotions, passions,
which had grown up in that strange temperament.
He found something very pathetic in that picture
she had drawn of herself in forecast, roaming dis
consolate through her rooms the livelong night,
unable to sleep. The woful moan of insomnia
seemed to make itself heard in every strain from
her piano.

Alice heard it also, but being unillumined, she
missed the romantic pathos. " I call it disgrace
ful," she muttered from her pillow, "for folks to
be banging away on a piano at this time of night.
There ought to be a law to prevent it."

"It may be some distressed soul," said The-
ron, gently, " seeking relief from the curse of
sleeplessness."

The wife laughed, almost contemptuously.
" Distressed fiddlesticks ! " was her only other
comment.

The music went on for a long time, — rising
now to strident heights, now sinking off to the
merest tinkling murmur, and broken ever and
again by intervals of utter hush. It did not pre
vent Alice from at once falling sound asleep ; but
Theron lay awake, it seemed to him, for hours,
listening tranquilly, and letting his mind wander at
will through the pleasant antechambers of Sleep,
where are more unreal fantasies than Dreamland
itself affords.

159

PART II

CHAPTER XI

FOR some weeks the Rev. Theron Ware saw
nothing of either the priest or the doctor, or the
interesting Miss Madden.

There were, indeed, more urgent matters to
think about. June had come ; and every suc
ceeding day brought closer to hand the ordeal of
his first Quarterly Conference in Octavius. The
waters grew distinctly rougher as his pastoral bark
neared this difficult passage.

He would have approached the great event with
an easier mind if he could have made out just how
he stood with his congregation. Unfortunately
nothing in his previous experiences helped him in
the least to measure or guess at the feelings of
these curious Octavians. Their Methodism seemed
to be sound enough, and to stick quite to the letter
of the Discipline, so long as it was expressed in
formulae. It was its spirit which he felt to be
complicated by all sorts of conditions wholly novel
to him.

The existence of a line of street- cars in the
town, for example, would not impress the casual

160

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

thinker as likely to prove a rock in the path of
peaceful religion. Theron, in his simplicity, had
even thought, when he first saw these bobtailed
cars bumping along the rails in the middle of the
main street, that they must be a great convenience
to people living in the outskirts, who wished to
get in to church of a Sunday morning. He was
imprudent enough to mention this in conversation
with one of his new parishioners. Then he learned,
to his considerable chagrin, that when this line was
built, some years before, a bitter war of words had
been fought upon the question of its being worked
on the Sabbath day. The then occupant of the
Methodist pulpit had so distinguished himself above
the rest by the solemnity and fervor of his protests
against this insolent desecration of God's day that
the Methodists of Octavius still felt themselves
peculiarly bound to hold this horse-car line, its
management, and everything connected with it, in
unbending aversion. At least once a year they
were accustomed to expect a sermon denouncing
it and all its impious Sunday patrons. Theron
made a mental resolve that this year they should
be disappointed.

Another burning problem, which he had not
been called upon before to confront, he found
now entangled with the mysterious line which
divided a circus from a menagerie. Those itiner
ant tent-shows had never come his way heretofore,
and he knew nothing of that fine balancing pro-
n 161

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

portion between ladies in tights on horseback and
cages full of deeply educational animals, which,
even as the impartial rain, was designed to em
brace alike the just and the unjust. There had
arisen inside the Methodist society of Octavius
some painful episodes, connected with members
who took their children "just to see the animals,"
and were convicted of having also watched the
Rose- Queen of the Arena, in her unequalled flying
leap through eight hoops, with an ardent and un
ashamed eye. One of these cases still remained on
the censorial docket of the church ; and Theron
understood that he was expected to name a com
mittee of five to examine and try it. This he
neglected to do.

He was no longer at all certain that the con
gregation as a whole liked his sermons. The
truth was, no doubt, that he had learned enough
to cease regarding the congregation as a whole.
He could still rely upon carrying along with him
in his discourses from the pulpit a large majority
of interested and approving faces. But here,
unhappily, was a case where the majority did not
rule. The minority, relatively small in numbers,
was prodigious in virile force.

More than twenty years had now elapsed since
that minor schism in the Methodist Episcopal
Church, the result of which was the independent
body known as Free Methodists, had relieved the
parent flock of its principal disturbing element.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The rupture came fittingly at that time when
all the " isms " of the argumentative fifties were
hurled violently together into the melting-pot of
civil war. The great Methodist Church, South,
had broken bodily off on the question of State
Rights. The smaller and domestic fraction of
Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue
which may be most readily described as one of
civilization. The seceders resented growth in
material prosperity; they repudiated the intro
duction of written sermons and organ-music ;
they deplored the increasing laxity in meddle
some piety, the introduction of polite manners
in the pulpit and class-room, and the develop
ment of even a rudimentary desire among the
younger people of the church to be like others
outside in dress and speech and deportment.
They did battle as long as they could, inside the
fold, to restore it to the severely straight and narrow
path of primitive Methodism. When the adverse
odds became too strong for them, they quitted the
church and set up a Bethel for themselves.

Octavius chanced to be one of the places where
they were able to hold their own within the church
organization. The Methodism of the town had
gone along without any local secession. It still
held in full fellowship the radicals who elsewhere
had followed their unbridled bent into the strong
est emotional vagaries, — where excited brethren
worked themselves up into epileptic fits, and

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

women whirled themselves about in weird re
ligious ecstasies, like dervishes of the Orient, till
they fell headlong in a state of trance. Octavian
Methodism was spared extravagances of this sort,
it is true, but it paid a price for the immunity.
The people whom an open split would have taken
away remained to leaven and dominate the whole
lump. This small advanced section, with its men
of a type all the more aggressive from its narrow
ness, and women who went about solemnly in plain
gray garments, with tight-fitting, unadorned, mouse-
colored sunbonnets, had not been able wholly to
enforce its views upon the social life of the church
members, but of its controlling influence upon their
official and public actions there could be no doubt.

The situation had begun to unfold itself to
Theron from the outset. He had recognized the
episodes of the forbidden Sunday milk and of the
flowers in poor Alice's bonnet as typical of much
more that was to come. No week followed without
bringing some new fulfilment of this foreboding.
Now, at the end of two months, he knew well
enough that the hitherto dominant minority was
hostile to him and his ministry, and would do
whatever it could against him.

Though Theron at once decided to show fight,
and did not at all waver in that resolve, his
courage was in the main of a despondent sort.
Sometimes it would flutter up to the point of
confidence, or at least hopefulness, when he met

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

with substantial men of the church who obviously
liked him, and whom he found himself mentally
ranging on his side, in the struggle which was to
come. But more often* it was blankly apparent
to him that, the moment flags were flying and
drums on the roll, these amiable fair-weather
friends would probably take to their heels.

Still, such as they were, his sole hope lay in
their support. He must make the best of them.
He set himself doggedly to the task of gathering
together all those who were not his enemies into
what, when the proper time came, should be
known as the pastor's party. There was plenty
of apostolic warrant for this. If there had not
been, Theron felt that the mere elementary de
mands of self-defence would have justified his
use of strategy.

The institution of pastoral calling, particularly
that inquisitorial form of it laid down in the Dis
cipline, had never attracted Theron. He and
Alice had gone about among their previous flocks
in quite a haphazard fashion, without thought of
system, much less of deliberate purpose. Theron
made lists now, and devoted thought and exami
nation to the personal tastes and characteristics of
the people to be cultivated. There were some, for
example, who would expect him to talk pretty much
as the Discipline ordained, — that is, to ask if they
had family prayer, to inquire after their souls, and
generally to minister grace to his hearers, — and

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

these in turn subdivided themselves into classes,
ranging from those who would wish nothing else
to those who needed only a mild spiritual flavor.
There were others whom he would please much
better by not talking shop at all. Although he
could ill afford it, he subscribed now for a daily
paper that he might have a perpetually renewed
source of good conversational topics for these
more worldly calls. He also bought several
pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted
to be entirely harmless, and he made a large
mysterious mark on the inside of his new silk hat
to remind him not to go out calling without some
of this in his pocket for the children.

Alice, he felt, was not helping him in this mat
ter as effectively as he could have wished. Her
attitude toward the church in Octavius might best
be described by the word " sulky." Great allow
ance was to be made, he realized, for her humilia
tion over the flowers in her bonnet. That might
justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from
meeting now and again by headaches, or unde
fined megrims. But it ought not to prevent her
from going about and making friends among the
kindlier parishioners who would welcome such a
thing, and whom he from time to time indicated to
her. She did go to some extent, it is true, but she
produced, in doing so, an effect of performing a
duty. He did not find traces anywhere of her
having created a brilliant social impression. When

166

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

they went out together, he was peculiarly conscious
of having to do the work unaided.

This was not at all like the Alice of former years,
of other charges. Why, she had been, beyond com
parison, the most popular young woman in Tyre.
What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius ?

Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when
she was unaware of his gaze, to try if her face
offered any answer to the riddle. It could not
be suggested that she was ill. Never in her life
had she been looking so well. She had thrown
herself, all at once, and with what was to him an
unaccountable energy, into the creation and man
agement of a flower-garden. She was out the
better part of every day, rain or shine, digging,
transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about
among her plants and shrubs. This work in the
open air had given her an aspect of physical well-
being which it. was impossible to be mistaken about.

Her husband was glad, of course, that she had
found some occupation which at once pleased her
and so obviously conduced to health. This was so
much a matter of course, in fact, that he said to
himself over and over again that he was glad.
Only — only, sometimes the thought would force
itself upon his attention that if she did not spend
so much of her time in her own garden, she would
have more time to devote to winning friends for
them in the Garden of the Lord, — friends whom
they were going to need badly.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The young minister, in taking anxious stock of
the chances for and against him, turned over often
in his mind the fact that he had already won rank
as a pulpit orator. His sermons had attracted al
most universal attention at Tyre, and his achieve
ment before the Conference at Tecumseh, if it did
fail to receive practical reward, had admittedly dis
tanced all the other preaching there. It was a part
of the evil luck pursuing him that here in this per
versely enigmatic Octavius his special gift seemed
to be of no use whatever. There were times,
indeed, when he was tempted to think that bad
preaching was what Octavius wanted.

Somewhere he had heard of a Presbyterian
minister, in charge of a big city church, who man
aged to keep well in with a watchfully Orthodox
congregation, and at the same time establish him
self in the affections of the community at large, by
simply preaching two kinds of sermons. In the
morning, when almost all who attended were his
own communicants, he gave them very cautious
and edifying doctrinal discourses, treading loyally
in the path of the Westminster Confession. To
the evening assemblages, made up for the larger
part of outsiders, he addressed broadly liberal
sermons, literary in form, and full of respectful
allusions to modern science and the philosophy of
the day. Thus he filled the church at both ser
vices, and put money in its treasury and his own
fame before the world. There was of course the

168

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

obvious danger that the pious elders who in the
forenoon heard infant damnation vigorously pro
claimed, would revolt when they heard after sup
per that there was some doubt about even adults
being damned at all. But either because the
same people did not attend both services, or be
cause the minister's perfect regularity in the morn
ing was each week regarded as a retraction of his
latest vagaries of an evening, no trouble ever came.

Theron had somewhat tentatively tried this on in
Octavius. It was no good. His parishioners were
of the sort who would have come to church eight
times a day on Sunday, instead of two, if occasion of
fered. The hope that even a portion of them would
stop away, and that their places would be taken in
the evening by less prejudiced strangers who wished
for intellectual rather than theological food, fell by
the wayside. The yearned-for strangers did not
come ; the familiar faces of the morning service all
turned up in their accustomed places every evening.
They were faces which confused and disheartened
Theron in the daytime. Under the gaslight they
seemed even harder and more unsympathetic. He
timorously experimented with them for an evening
or two, then abandoned the effort.

Once there had seemed the beginning of a chance.
The richest banker in Octavius — a fat, sensual,
hog- faced old bachelor — surprised everybody one
evening by entering the church and taking a seat.
Theron happened to know who he was ; even if he

169

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

had not known, the suppressed excitement visible
in the congregation, the way the sisters turned round
to look, the way the more important brethren put
their heads together and exchanged furtive whis
pers, — would have warned him that big game was
in view. He recalled afterward with something like
self-disgust the eager, almost tremulous pains he
himself took to please this banker. There was a
part of the sermon, as it had been written out,
which might easily give offence to a single man of
wealth and free notions of life. With the alertness
of a mental gymnast, Theron ran ahead, excised
this portion, and had ready when the gap was
reached some very pretty general remarks, all the
more effective and eloquent, he felt, for having been
extemporized. People said it was a good sermon ;
and after the benediction and dispersion some of
the officials and principal pew-holders remained to
talk over the likelihood of a capture having been
effected. Theron did not get away without having
this mentioned to him, and he was conscious of
sharing deeply the hope of the brethren, — with the
added reflection that it would be a personal triumph
for himself into the bargain. He was ashamed of
this feeling a little later, and of his trick with the
sermon. But this chastening product of introspec
tion was all the fruit which the incident bore. The
banker never came again.

Theron returned one afternoon, a little earlier
than usual, from a group of pastoral calls. Alice,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

who was plucking weeds in a border at the shady
side of the house, heard his step, and rose from
her labors. He was walking slowly, and seemed
weary. He took off his high hat, as he saw her,
and wiped his brow. The broiling June sun was
still high overhead. Doubtless it was its insufferable
heat which was accountable for the worn lines in
his face and the spiritless air which the wife's eye
detected. She went to the gate, and kissed him as
he entered.

" I believe, if I were you," she said, " I 'd carry
an umbrella such scorching days as this. Nobody 'd
think anything of it. I don't see why a minister
should n't carry one as much as a woman carries a
parasol."

Theron gave her a rueful, meditative sort of
smile. " I suppose people really do think of us as
a kind of hybrid female," he remarked. Then,
holding his hat in his hand, he drew a long breath of
relief at finding himself in the shade, and looked
about him.

" Why, you 've got more posies here, on this one
side of the house alone, than mother had in her whole
yard," he said, after a little. " Let 's see — I know
that one : that 's columbine, isn't it? And that's
London pride, and that 's ragged robin. I don't
know any of the others."

Alice recited various unfamiliar names, as she
pointed out the several plants which bore them,
and he listened with a kindly semblance of interest.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

They strolled thus to the rear of the house, where
thick clumps of fragrant pinks lined both sides of
the path. She picked some of these for him, and
gave him more names with which to label the con
siderable number of other plants he saw about him.

" I had no idea we were so well provided as all
this," he commented at last. "Those Van Sizers
must have been tremendous hands for flowers.
You were lucky in following such people."

" Van Sizers ! " echoed Alice, with contempt.
" All they left was old tomato cans and clamshells.
Why, I Ve put in every blessed one of these myself,
all except those peonies, there, and one brier on the
side wall."

" Good for you ! " exclaimed Theron, approv
ingly. Then it occurred to him to ask, " But
where did you get them all ? Around among our
friends ? "

" Some few," responded Alice, with a note of
hesitation in her voice. " Sister Bult gave me the
verbenas, there, and the white pinks were a present
from Miss Stevens. But most of them Levi Gor-
ringe was good enough to send me, — from his
garden."

"I didn't know that Gorringe had a garden,"
said Theron. " I thought he lived over his law-
office, in the brick block, there."

"Well, I don't know that it's exactly his" ex
plained Alice ; " but it 's a big garden somewhere
outside, where he can have anything he likes."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

She went on with a little laugh : " I did n't like to
question him too closely, for fear he 'd think I was
looking a gift horse in the mouth, — or else hinting
for more. It was quite his own offer, you know.
He picked them all out for me, and brought them
here, and lent me a book telling me just what to do
with each one. And in a few days, now, I am to
have another big batch of plants, — dahlias and
zinnias and asters and so on ; I 'rn almost ashamed
to take them. But it 's such a change to find some
one in this Octavius who is n't all self ! "

"Yes, Gorringe is a good fellow," said Theron.
" I wish he was a professing member." Then
some new thought struck him. " Alice," he ex
claimed, " I believe I '11 go and see him this very
afternoon. I don't know why it has n't occurred
to me before : he 's just the man whose advice I
need most. He knows these people here ; he
can tell me what to do."

"Aren't you too tired now?" suggested Alice,
as Theron put on his hat.

" No, the sooner the better," he replied, moving
now toward the gate.

" Well," she began, " if I were you, I would n't
say too much about — that is, I — but never mind."

" What is it? " asked her husband.

" Nothing whatever," replied Alice, positively.
" It was only some nonsense of mine ; " and
Theron, placidly accepting the feminine whim,
went off down the street again.

173

CHAPTER XII

THE Rev. Mr. Ware found Levi Gorringe's law-
office readily enough, but its owner was not in.
He probably would be back again, though, in a
quarter of an hour or so, the boy said, and the
minister at once decided to wait.

Theron was interested in finding that this office-
boy was no other than Harvey. — the lad who
brought milk to the parsonage every morning .
He remembered now that he had heard good things
of this urchin, as to the hard work he did to help
his mother, the Widow Semple, in her struggle to
keep a roof over her head ; and also bad things, in
that he did not come regularly either to church or
Sunday-school. The clergyman recalled, too, that
Harvey had impressed him as a character.

"Well, sonny, are you going to be a lawyer? "
he asked, as he seated himself by the window, and
looked about him, first at the dusty litter of old
papers, pamphlets, and tape-bound documents in
bundles which crowded the stuffy chamber, and
then at the boy himself.

Harvey was busy at a. big box, — a rough pine
dry-goods box which bore the flaring label of an
express company, and also of a well-known seed-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

firm in a Western city, and which the boy had
apparently just opened. He was lifting from it,
and placing on the table after he had shaken off
the sawdust and moss in which they were packed,
small parcels of what looked in the fading light
to be half-dried plants.

" Well, I don't know — I rather guess not," he
made answer, as he pursued his task. " So far as
I can make out, this would n't be the place to
start in at, if I was going to be a lawyer. A boy
can learn here first-rate how to load cartridges
and clean a gun, and braid trout- flies on to leaders,
but I don't see much law laying around loose.
Anyway," he went on, " I could n't afford to read
law, and not be getting any wages. I have to
earn money, you know."

Theron felt that he liked the boy. "Yes," he
said, with a kindly tone ; " I 've heard that you are
a good, industrious youngster. I daresay Mr. Gor-
ringe will see to it that you get a chance to read
law, and get wages too."

" Oh, I can read all there is here and welcome,"
the boy explained, stepping toward the window to
decipher the label on a bundle of roots in his hand,
" but that 's no good unless there 's regular prac
tice coming into the office all the while. That's
how you learn to be a lawyer. But Gorringe don't
have what I call a practice at all. He just sees
men in the other room there, with the door shut,
and whatever there is to do he does it all himself."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The minister remembered a stray hint some
where that Mr. Gorringe was a money-lender,
— what was colloquially called a "note-shaver."
To his rustic sense, there was something not
quite nice about that occupation. It would
be indecorous, he felt, to encourage further talk
about it from the boy.

" What are you doing there?" he inquired, to
change the subject.

" Sorting out some plants," replied Harvey. " I
don't know what 's got into Gorringe lately. This is
the third big box he 's had since I 've been here, —
that is, in six weeks, — : besides two baskets full of
rose-bushes. I don't know what he does with them.
He carries them off himself somewhere. I Ve
had kind of half a notion that he 's figurin' on get
ting married. I can't think of anything else that
would make a man spend money like water, — just
for flowers and bushes. They do get foolish, you
know, when they Ve got marriage on the brain."

Theron found himself only imperfectly following
the theories of the young philosopher. It was his
fact that monopolized the minister's attention.

" But as I understand it," he remarked hesita
tingly, "Brother Gorringe — or rather Mr. Gor
ringe — gets all the plants he wants, everything
he likes, from a big garden somewhere outside. I
don't know that it is exactly his ; but I remember
hearing something to that effect."

The boy slapped the last sawdust off his hands,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and, as he came to the window, shook his head.
" These don't come from no garden outside," he
declared. " They come from the dealers', and he
pays solid cash for 'em. The invoice for this lot
alone was thirty-one dollars and sixty cents.
There it is on the table. You can see it for
yourself."

Mr. Ware did not offer to look. " Very likely
these are for the garden I was speaking of," he
said. " Of course you can't go on taking plants
out of a garden indefinitely without putting
others in."

" I don't know anything about any garden that
he takes plants out of," answered Harvey, and
looked meditatively for a minute or two out upon
the street below. Then he turned to the minis
ter. " Your wife 's doing a good deal of gardening
this spring, I notice," he said casually. " You 'd
hardly think it was the same place, she 's fixed it
up so. If she wants any extra hoeing done, I can
always get off Saturday afternoons."

" I will remember," said Theron. He also
looked out of the window ; and nothing more was
said until, a few moments later, Mr. Gorringe him
self came in.

The lawyer seemed both surprised and pleased
at discovering the identity of his visitor, with whom
he shook hands in almost an excess of cordiality.
He spread a large newspaper over the pile of seed
ling plants on the table, pushed the packing- box
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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

under the table with his foot, and said almost per
emptorily to the boy, " You can go now ! "
Then he turned again to Theron.

"Well, Mr. Ware, I'm glad to see you," he
repeated, and drew up a chair by the window.
"Things are going all right with you, I hope."

Theron noted again the waving black hair, the
dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache
and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer's face a com
bined effect of romance and smartness. No ; it
was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which
suggested this latter quality. The recollection of
having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hos
tility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had
their backs turned, came mercifully at the moment
to recall the young minister to his errand.

" I thought I would drop in and have a chat
with you," he said, getting better under way as he
went on. " Quarterly Conference is only a fort
night off, and I am a good deal at sea about what
is going to happen."

" I 'm not a church member, you know," inter
posed Gorringe. "That shuts me out of the
Quarterly Conference."

"Alas, yes ! " said Theron. "I wish it did n't.
I 'm afraid I 'm not going to have any friends to
spare there."

" What are you afraid of? " asked the lawyer,
seeming now to be wholly at his ease again.
"They can't eat you."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" No, they keep me too lean for that," responded
Theron, with a pensive smile. " I was going to
ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an
extra allowance. I don't see how I can go on as
it is. The sum fixed by the last Quarterly Confer
ence of the old year, and which I am getting now,
is one hundred dollars less than my predecessor
had. That isn't fair, and it isn't right. But so
far from its looking as if I could get an increase,
the prospect seems rather that they will make me
pay for the gas and that sidewalk. I never re
covered more than about half of my moving ex
penses, as you know, and — and, frankly, I don't
know which way to turn. It keeps me miserable
all the while."

"That's where you're wrong," said Mr. Gor-
ringe. " If you let things like that worry you,
you '11 keep a sore skin all your life. You take
my advice and just go ahead your own gait, and
let other folks do the worrying. They are pretty
close-fisted here, for a fact, but you can manage
to rub along somehow. If you should get into
any real difficulties, why, I guess — " the lawyer
paused to smile in a hesitating, significant way, —
" I guess some road out can be found all right.
The main thing is, don't fret, and don't allow your
wife to — to fret either."

He stopped abruptly. Theron nodded in re
cognition of his amiable tone, and then found the
nod lengthening itself out into almost a bow as

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the thought spread through his mind that this
had been nothing more nor less than a promise
to help him with money if worst came to worst.
He looked at Levi Gorringe, and said to himself
that the intuition of women was wonderful. Alice
had picked him out as a friend of theirs merely by
seeing him pass the house.

"Yes," he said ; " I am specially anxious to keep
my wife from worrying. She was surrounded in
her girlhood by a good deal of what, relatively, we
should call luxury, and that makes it all the harder
for her to be a poor minister's wife. I had quite
decided to get her a hired girl, come what might,
but she thinks she 'd rather get on without one.
Her health is better, I must admit, than it was
when we came here. She works out in her garden
a great deal, and that seems to agree with her."

" Octavius is a healthy place, — that 's generally
admitted," replied the lawyer, with indifference.
He seemed not to be interested in Mrs. Ware's
health, but looked intently out through the window
at the buildings opposite, and drummed with his
fingers on the arms of his chair.

Theron made haste to revert to his errand.
" Of course, your not being in the Quarterly
Conference," he said, " renders certain things
impossible. But I did n't know but you might
have some knowledge of how matters are going,
what plans the officials of the church had ; they
seem to have agreed to tell me nothing."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"Well, I have heard this much," responded
Gorringe. " They 're figuring on getting the
Soulsbys here to raise the debt and kind o' shake
things up generally. I guess that 's about as good
as settled. Had n't you heard of it? "

" Not a breath ! " exclaimed Theron, mourn
fully. " Well," he added upon reflection, " I 'm
sorry, downright sorry. The debt-raiser seems to
me about the lowest-down thing we produce. I Ve
heard of those Soulsbys ; I saw him indeed once
at Conference, but I believe she is the head of the
firm."

" Yes ; she wears the breeches, I understand,"
said Gorringe, sententiously.

" I had hoped," the young minister began with
a rueful sigh, " in fact, I felt quite confident at the
outset that I could pay off this debt, and put the
church generally on a new footing, by giving extra
attention to my pulpit work. It is hardly for me
to say it, but in other places where I have been,
my preaching has been rather — rather a feature
in the town itself. I have always been accustomed
to attract to our services a good many non-members,
and that, as you know, helps tremendously from
a money point of view. But somehow that has
failed here. I doubt if the average congregations
are a whit larger now than they were when I came
in April. I know the collections are not."

"No," commented the lawyer, slowly; "you'll
never do anything in that line in Octavius. You

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

might, of course, if you were to stay here and
work hard at it for five or six years — "

" Heaven forbid ! " groaned Mr. Ware.

"Quite so," put in the other. "The point is
that the Methodists here are a little set by them
selves. I don't know that they like one another
specially, but I do know that they are not what
you might call popular with people outside. Now,
a new preacher at the Presbyterian church, or even
the Baptist, — he might have a chance to create
talk, and make a stir. But Methodist, — no !
People who don't belong won't come near the
Methodist church here so long as there 's any
other place with a roof on it to go to. Give a
dog a bad name, you know. Well, the Metho
dists here have got a bad name ; and if you could
preach like Henry Ward Beech er himself you
would n't change it, or get folks to come and
hear you."

" I see what you mean," Theron responded.
" I 'm not particularly surprised myself that Octa-
vius doesn't love us, or look to us for intellectual
stimulation. I myself leave that pulpit more often
than otherwise feeling like a wet rag, — utterly limp
and discouraged. But, if you don't mind my
speaking of it, you don't belong, and yet you
come."

It was evident that the lawyer did not mind.
He spoke freely in reply. " Oh, yes, I Ve got
into the habit of it. I began going when I first

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

came here, and — and so it grew to be natural for
me to go. Then, of course, being the only lawyer
you have, a considerable amount of my business is
mixed up in one way or another with your mem
bership ; you see those are really the things which
settle a man in a rut, and keep him there."

" I suppose your people were Methodists," said
Theron, to fill in the pause, " and that is how you
originally started with us."

Levi Gorringe shook his head. He leaned back,
half closed his eyes, put his finger-tips together,
and almost smiled as if something in retrospect
pleased and moved him.

" No," he said ; " I went to the church first to
see a girl who used to go there. It was long be
fore your time. All her family moved away years
ago. You wouldn't know any of them. I was
younger then, and I did n't know as much as I do
now. I worshipped the very ground that girl
walked on, and like a fool I never gave her so
much as a hint of it. Looking back now, I can
see that I might have had her if I 'd asked her.
But I went instead and sat around and looked at
her at church and Sunday-school and prayer-meet
ings Thursday nights, and class- meetings after the
sermon. She was devoted to religion and church
work ; and, thinking it would please her, I joined
the church on probation. Men can fool them
selves easier than they can other people. I actu
ally believed at the time that I had experienced

183

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

religion. I felt myself full of all sorts of awaken
ings of the soul and so forth. But it was really
that girl. You see I 'm telling you the thing just
as it was. I was very happy. I think it was the
happiest time of my life. I remember there was
a love- feast while I was on probation ; and I sat
down in front, right beside her, and we ate the
little square chunks of bread and drank the water
together, and I held one corner of her hymn-book
when we stood up and sang. That was the near
est I ever got to her, or to full membership in the
church. That very next week, I think it was, we
learned that she had got engaged to the minister's
son, — a young man who had just become a minister
himself. They got married, and went away — and
I — somehow I never took up my membership
when the six months' probation was over. That 's
how it was."

" It is very interesting," remarked Theron,
softly, after a little silence, — " and very full of
human nature."

" Well, now you see," said the lawyer, " what I
mean when I say that there has n't been another
minister here since, that I should have felt like
telling this story to. They would n't have under
stood it at all. They would have thought it was
blasphemy for me to say straight out that what I
took for experiencing religion was really a girl.
But you are different. I felt that at once, the first
time I saw you. In a pulpit or out of it, what I

184

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

like in a human being is that he should be
human."

" It pleases me beyond measure that you should
like me, then," returned the young minister, with
frank gratification shining on his face. "The
world is made all the sweeter and more lovable by
these — these elements of romance. I am not
one of those who would wish to see them ban
ished or frowned upon. I don't mind admitting
to you that there is a good deal in Methodism —
I mean the strict practice of its letter which you
find here in Octavius — that is personally distaste
ful to me. I read the other day of an English
bishop who said boldly, publicly, that no modern
nation could practise the principles laid down in
the Sermon on the Mount and survive for twenty-
four hours."

" Ha, ha ! That 's good ! " laughed the lawyer.

" I felt that it was good, too," pursued Theron.
" I am getting to see a great many things differ
ently, here in Octavius. Our Methodist Discipline
is like the Beatitudes, — very helpful and beautiful
if treated as spiritual suggestion, but more or less
of a stumbling-block if insisted upon literally. I
declare!" he added, sitting up in his chair, "I
never talked like this to a living soul before in all
my life. Your confidences were contagious."

The Rev. Mr. Ware rose as he spoke, and took
up his hat.

"Must you be going?" asked the lawyer, also

•85

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

rising. " Well, I 'm glad I have n't shocked
you. Come in oftener when you are passing.
And if you see anything I can help you in, always
tell me."

The two men shook hands, with an emphatic
and lingering clasp.

"/ am glad," said Theron, "that you didn't
stop coming to church just because you lost the
girl."

Levi Gorringe answered the minister's pleasantry
with a smile which curled his mustache upward,
and expanded in little wrinkles at the ends of his
eyes. " No," he said jestingly. " I 'm death on
collecting debts ; and I reckon that the church
still owes me a girl. I '11 have one yet."

So, with merriment the echoes of which pleas
antly accompanied Theron down the stairway, the
two men parted.

1*6

CHAPTER XIII

THOUGH Time lagged in passing with a slowness
which seemed born of studied insolence, there did
arrive at last a day which had something definitive
about it to Theron's disturbed and restless mind.
It was a Thursday, and the prayer-meeting to be
held that evening would be the last before the
Quarterly Conference, now only four days off.

For some reason, the young minister found him
self dwelling upon this fact, and investing it with
importance. But yesterday the Quarterly Confer
ence had seemed a long way ahead. To-day
brought it alarmingly close to hand. He had not
heretofore regarded the weekly assemblage for
prayer and song as a thing calling for preparation,
or for any preliminary thought. Now on this
Thursday morning he went to his desk after break
fast, which was a sign that he wanted the room to
himself, quite as if he had the task of a weighty
sermon before him. He sat at the desk all the
forenoon, doing no writing, it is true, but remem
bering every once in a while, when his mind
turned aside from the book in his hands, that
there was that prayer-meeting in the evening.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Sometimes he reached the point of vaguely won
dering why this strictly commonplace affair should
be forcing itself thus upon his attention. Then,
with a kind of mental shiver at the recollec
tion that this was Thursday, and that the great
struggle came on Monday, he would go back to
his book.

There were a half-dozen volumes on the open
desk before him. He had taken them out from
beneath a pile of old " Sunday-School Advocates "
and church magazines, where they had lain hidden
from Alice's view most of the week. If there had
been a locked drawer in the house, he would have
used it instead to hold these books, which had
come to him in a neat parcel, which also con
tained an amiable note from Dr. Ledsmar,
recalling a pleasant evening in May, and expres
sing the hope that the accompanying works would
be of some service. Theron had glanced at the
backs of the uppermost two, and discovered that
their author was Renan. Then he had hastily put
the lot in the best place he could think of to
escape his wife's observation.

He realized now that there had been no need
for this secrecy. Of the other four books, by
Sayce, Budge, Smith, and Lenormant, three indeed
revealed themselves to be published under religious
auspices. As for Renan, he might have known
that the name would be meaningless to Alice.
The feeling that he himself was not much wiser in

188

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

this matter than his wife may have led him to
pass over the learned text-books on Chaldean
antiquity, and even the volume of Renan which
appeared to be devoted to Oriental inscriptions,
and take up his other book, entitled in the trans
lation, " Recollections of my Youth." This he
rather glanced through, at the outset, following
with a certain inattention the introductory sketches
and essays, which dealt with an unfamiliar, and, to
his notion, somewhat preposterous Breton racial
type. Then, little by little, it dawned upon him
that there was a connected story in all this ;
and suddenly he came upon it, out in the open, as
it were. It was the story of how a deeply devout
young man, trained from his earliest boyhood for
the sacred office, and desiring passionately nothing
but to be worthy of it, came to a point where, at
infinite cost of pain to himself and of anguish to
those dearest to him, he had to declare that he
could no longer believe at all in revealed religion.
Theron Ware read this all with an excited inter
est which no book had ever stirred in him before.
Much of it he read over and over again, to make
sure that he penetrated everywhere the husk of
French habits of thought and Catholic methods in
which the kernel was wrapped. He broke off mid
way in this part of the book to go out to the kitchen
to dinner, and began the meal in silence. To
Alice's questions he replied briefly that he was
preparing himself for the evening's prayer-meeting.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

She lifted her brows in such frank surprise at this
that he made a further and somewhat rambling
explanation about having again taken up the work
on his book, — the book about Abraham.

" I thought you said you 'd given that up alto
gether," she remarked.

" Well," he said, " I was discouraged about it
for a while. But a man never does anything big
without getting discouraged over and over again
while he 's doing it. I don't say now that I shall
write precisely that book, — I'm merely reading
scientific works about the period, just now, — but if
not that, I shall write some other book. Else how
will you get that piano ? " he added, with an attempt
at a smile.

" I thought you had given that up, too ! " she
replied ruefully. Then before he could speak, she
went on : " Never mind the piano ; that can wait.
What I Ve got on my mind just now is n't piano ;
it 's potatoes. Do you know, I saw some the other
day at Rasbach's, splendid potatoes, — these are
some of them, — and fifteen cents a bushel cheaper
than those dried-up old things Brother Barnum
keeps, and so I bought two bushels. And Sister
Barnum met me on the street this morning, and
threw it in my face that the Discipline commands
us to trade with each other. Is there any such
command? "

" Yes," said the husband. " It 's Section 33.
Don't you remember? I looked it up in Tyre.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

We are to ' evidence our desire of salvation by doing
good, especially to them that are of the household
of faith, or groaning so to be ; by employing them
preferably to others ; buying one of another ; help
ing each other in business,' — and so on. Yes, it 's
all there."

" Well, I told her I did n't believe it was," put
in Alice, " and I said that even if it was, there ought
to be another section about selling potatoes to their
minister for more than they 're worth, — potatoes
that turn all green when you boil them, too. I
believe I '11 read up that old Discipline myself,
and see if it has n't got some things that I can talk
back with."

"The very section before that, Number 32, en
joins members against ' uncharitable or unprofitable
conversation, — particularly speaking evil of magis
trates or ministers.' You 'd have 'em there, I think."
Theron had begun cheerfully enough, but the care
worn, preoccupied look returned now to his face.
" I 'm sorry if we 've fallen out with the Barnums,"
he said. " His brother-in-law, Davis, the Sunday-
school superintendent, is a member of the Quarterly
Conference, you know, and I 've been hoping that
he was on my side. I 've been taking a good deal
of pains to make up to him."

He ended with a sigh, the pathos of which im
pressed Alice. " If you think it will do any good,"
she volunteered, " I '11 go and call on the Davises
this very afternoon. I 'm sure to find her at home,

191

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

— she 's tied hand and foot with that brood of
hers, — and you 'd better give me some of that candy
'or them."

Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and
relapsed into silence. When the meal was over, he
brought out the confectionery to his wife, and with
out a word went back to that remarkable book.

When Alice returned toward the close of day, to
prepare the simple tea which was always laid a half-
hour earlier on Thursdays and Sundays, she found
her husband where she had left him, still busy with
those new scientific works. She recounted to him
some incidents of her call upon Mrs. Davis, as she
took off her hat and put on the big kitchen apron, —
how pleased Mrs. Davis seemed to be ; how her
affection for her sister-in-law, the grocer's wife,
disclosed itself to be not even skin-deep ; how the
children leaped upon the candy as if they had never
seen any before ; and how, in her belief, Mr. Davis
would be heart and soul on Theron's side at the
Conference.

To her surprise, the young minister seemed not
at all interested. He hardly looked at her during
her narrative, but reclined in the easy -chair with
his head thrown back, and an abstracted gaze wan
dering aimlessly about the ceiling. When she
avowed her faith in the Sunday-school superinten
dent's loyal partisanship, which she did with a par
donable pride in having helped to make it secure,
her husband even closed his eyes, and moved

192

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

his head with a gesture which plainly bespoke
indifference.

" I expected you 'd be tickled to death," she
remarked, with evident disappointment.

*' I Ve a bad headache," he explained, after a
minute's pause.

" No wonder ! " Alice rejoined, sympathetically
enough, but with a note of reproof as well. " What
can you expect, staying cooped up in here all day
long, poring over those books? People are all the
while remarking that you study too much. I tell
them, of course, that you 're a great hand for read
ing, and always were ; but I think myself it would
be better if you got out more, and took more
exercise, and saw people. You know lots and
slathers more than they do now, or ever will, if
you never opened another book."

Theron regarded her with an expression which
she had never seen on his face before. "You
don't realize what you are saying," he replied
slowly. He sighed as he added, with increased
gravity, " I am the most ignorant man alive ! "

Alice began a little laugh of wifely incredulity,
and then let it die away as she recognized that he
was really troubled and sad in his mind. She bent
over to kiss him lightly on the brow, and tiptoed
her way out into the kitchen.

" I believe I will let you make my excuses at
the prayer- meeting this evening," he said all at
once, as the supper came to an end. He had
X3 193

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

eaten next to nothing during the meal, and had
sat in a sort of brown-study from which Alice kindly
forbore to arouse him. " I don't know — I hardly
feel equal to it. They won't take it amiss — for
once — if you explain to them that I — I am not
at all well."

" Oh, I do hope you 're not coming down with
anything ! " Alice had risen too, and was gazing
at him with a solicitude the tenderness of which at
once comforted, and in some obscure way jarred
on his nerves. " Is there anything I can do — or
shall I go for a doctor? We've got mustard in
the house, and senna — I think there 's some senna
left — and Jamaica ginger."

Theron shook his head wearily at her. " Oh, no,
— no ! " he expostulated. " It is n't anything that
needs drugs, or doctors either. It 's just mental
worry and fatigue, that 's all. An evening's quiet
rest in the big chair, and early to bed, — that will
fix me up all right."

" But you '11 read ; and that will make your
head worse," said Alice.

" No, I won't read any more," he promised her,
walking slowly into the sitting-room, and settling
himself in the big chair, the while she brought out
a pillow from the adjoining best bedroom, and
adjusted it behind his head. " That 's nice ! I '11
just lie quiet here, and perhaps doze a little till you
come back. I feel in the mood for the rest j it
will do me all sorts of good."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He closed his eyes ; and Alice, regarding his up
turned face anxiously, decided that already it looked
more at peace than awhile ago.

" Well, I hope you '11 be better when I get back,''
she said, as she began preparations for the evening
service. These consisted in combing stiffly back
the strands of light-brown hair which, during the
day, had exuberantly loosened themselves over her
temples into something almost like curls ; in fas
tening down upon this rebellious hair a plain brown-
straw bonnet, guiltless of all ornament save a bind
ing ribbon of dull umber hue ; and in putting on a
thin dark-gray shawl and a pair of equally subdued
lisle-thread gloves. Thus attired, she made a mis
chievous little grimace of dislike at her puritanical
image in the looking-glass over the mantel, and
then turned to announce her departure.

" Well, I 'm off," she said. Theron opened his
eyes to take in this figure of his wife dressed for
prayer-meeting, and then closed them again
abruptly. "All right," he murmured, and then
he heard the door shut behind her.

Although he had been alone all day, there seemed
to be quite a unique value and quality in this
present solitude. He stretched out his legs on the
opposite chair, and looked lazily about him, with
the feeling that at last he had secured some leisure,
and could think undisturbed to his heart's content.
There were nearly two hours of unbroken quiet be
fore him ; and the mere fact of his having stepped

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

aside from the routine of his duty to procure it
marked it in his thoughts as a special occasion,
which ought in the nature of things to yield more
than the ordinary harvest of mental profit.

Theron's musings were broken in upon from
time to time by rumbling outbursts of hymn-singing
from the church next door. Surely, he said to
himself, there could be no other congregation in
the Conference, or in all Methodism, which sang so
badly as these Octavians did. The noise, as it
came to him now and again, divided itself familiarly
into a main strain of hard, high, sharp, and tinny
female voices, with three or four concurrent and
clashing branch strains of part- singing by men who
did not know how. How well he already knew
these voices ! Through two wooden walls he
could detect the conceited and pushing note of
Brother Lovejoy, who tried always to drown the
rest out, and the lifeless, unmeasured weight of
shrill clamor which Sister Barnum hurled into every
chorus, half closing her eyes and sticking out her
chin as she did so. They drawled their hymns too,
these people, till Theron thought he understood
that injunction in the Discipline against singing too
slowly. It had puzzled him heretofore ; now he
felt that it must have been meant in prophecy for
Octavius.

It was impossible not to recall in contrast that
other church music he had heard, a month before,
and the whole atmosphere of that other pastoral

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

sitting-room, from which he had listened to it.
The startled and crowded impressions of that
strange evening had been lying hidden in his mind
all this while, driven into a corner by the pressure
of more ordinary, every-day matters. They came
forth now, and passed across his brain, — no longer
confusing and distorted, but in orderly and intelli
gible sequence. Their earlier effect had been one
of frightened fascination. Now he looked them
over calmly as they lifted themselves, one by one,
and found himself not shrinking at all, or evading
anything, but dwelling upon each in turn as a
natural and welcome part of the most important
experience of his life.

The young minister had arrived, all at once, at
this conclusion. Pie did not question at all the
means by which he had reached it. Nothing was
clearer to his mind than the conclusion itself, —
that his meeting with the priest and the doctor was
the turning-point in his career. They had lifted
him bodily out of the slough of ignorance, of con
tact with low minds and sordid, narrow things, and
put him on solid ground. This book he had been
reading — this gentle, tender, lovable book, which
had as much true piety in it as any devotional
book he had ever read, and yet, unlike all devo
tional books, put its foot firmly upon everything
which could not be proved in human reason to be
true — must be merely one of a thousand which
men like Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar knew by

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

heart. The very thought that he was on the way
now to know them, too, made Theron tremble.
The prospect wooed him, and he thrilled in re
sponse, with the wistful and delicate eagerness of a
young lover.

Somehow, the fact that the priest and the doc
tor were not religious men, and that this book
which had so impressed and stirred him was noth
ing more than Kenan's recital of how he, too,
ceased to be a religious man, did not take a form
which Theron could look square in the face. It
wore the shape, instead, of a vague premise that
there were a great many different kinds of religions,
— the past and dead races had multiplied these in
their time literally into thousands, — and that each
no doubt had its central support of truth some
where for the good men who were in it, and that
to call one of these divine and condemn all the
others was a part fit only for untutored bigots.
Renan had formally repudiated Catholicism, yet
could write in his old age with the deepest filial
affection of the Mother Church he had quitted.
Father Forbes could talk coolly about the " Christ-
myth " without even ceasing to be a priest, and
apparently a very active and devoted priest. Evi
dently there was an intellectual world, a world of
culture and grace, of lofty thoughts and the inspir
ing communion of real knowledge, where creeds
were not of importance, and where men asked one
another, not " Is your soul saved?" but " Is your

198

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

mind well furnished? " Theron had the sensation
of having been invited to become a citizen of this
world. The thought so dazzled him that his im
pulses were dragging him forward to take the new
oath of allegiance before he had had time to
reflect upon what it was he was abandoning.

The droning of the Doxology from the church
outside stirred Theron suddenly out of his revery.
It had grown quite dark, and he rose and lit the
gas. " Blest be the Tie that Binds," they were
singing. He paused, with hand still in air, to
listen. That well-worn phrase arrested his atten
tion, and gave itself a new meaning. He was
bound to those people, it was true, but he could
never again harbor the delusion that the tie be
tween them was blessed. There was vaguely
present in his mind the consciousness that other
ties were loosening as well. Be that as it might,
one thing was certain. He had passed definitely
beyond pretending to himself that there was any
thing spiritually in common between him and the
Methodist Church of Octavius. The necessity of
his keeping up the pretence with others rose on
the instant like a looming shadow before his men
tal vision. He turned away from it, and bent his
brain to think of something else.

The noise of Alice opening the front door came
as a pleasant digression. A second later it became
clear from the sound of voices that she had brought
some one back with her, and Theron hastily

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

f

stretched himself out again in the armchair, with
his head back in the pillow, and his feet on the
other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting
that he was an invalid, and he protected himself
the further now by assuming an air of lassitude
verging upon prostration.

" Yes ; there 's a light burning. It 's all right,"
he heard Alice say. She entered the room, and
Theron's head was too bad to permit him to turn
it, and see who her companion was.

" Theron dear," Alice began, " I knew you 'd be
glad to see her, even if you were out of sorts ; and
I persuaded her just to run in for a minute. Let
me introduce you to Sister Soulsby. Sister Soulsby,
— my husband."

The Rev. Mr. Ware sat upright with an ener
getic start, and fastened upon the stranger a look
which conveyed anything but the satisfaction his
wife had been so sure about. It was at the first
blush an undisguised scowl ; and only some fleeting
memory of that reflection about needing now to
dissemble, prevented him from still frowning as he
rose to his feet, and perfunctorily held out his hand.

" Delighted, I 'm sure," he mumbled. Then,
looking up, he discovered that Sister Soulsby knew
he was not delighted, and that she seemed not to
mind in the least.

"As your good lady said, I just ran in for a
moment," she remarked, shaking his limp hand
with a brisk, business-like grasp, and dropping it.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" I hate bothering sick people, but as we 're to be
thrown together a good deal this next week or so,
I thought I 'd like to lose no time in saying
' howdy.' I won't keep you up now. Your wife
has been sweet enough to ask me to move my
trunk over here in the morning, so that you '11 see
enough of me and to spare."

Theron looked falteringly into her face, as he
strove for words which should sufficiently mask
the disgust this intelligence stirred within him.
A debt-raiser in the town was bad enough ! A
debt-raiser quartered in the very parsonage ! — he
ground his teeth to think of it.

Alice read his hesitation aright. " Sister Soulsby
went to the hotel," she hastily put in ; " and Loren
Pierce was after her to come and stay at his house,
and / ventured to tell her that I thought we could
make her more comfortable here." She accom
panied this by so daring a grimace and nod that
her husband woke up to the fact that a point in
Conference politics was involved.

He squeezed a doubtful smile upon his features.
" We shall both do our best," he said. It was not
easy, but he forced increasing amiability into his
glance and tone. " Is Brother Soulsby here, too ? "
he asked.

The debt- raiser shook her head, — again the
prompt, decisive movement, so like a busy man of
aifairs. " No," she answered. " He 's doing sup
ply down on the Hudson this week, but he '11 be

201

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

here in time for the Sunday morning love- feast.
I always like to come on ahead, and see how the
land lies. Well, good-night ! Your head will be
all right in the morning."

Precisely what she meant by this assurance,
Theron did not attempt to guess. He received
her adieu, noted the masterful manner in which
she kissed his wife, and watched her pass out into
the hall, with the feeling uppermost that this was a
person who decidedly knew her way about. Much
as he was prepared to dislike her, and much as he
detested the vulgar methods her profession typi
fied, he could not deny that she seemed a very
capable sort of woman.

This mental concession did not prevent his
fixing upon Alice, when she returned to the room,
a glance of obvious disapproval.

"Theron," she broke forth, to anticipate his
reproach, " I did it for the best. The Pierces
would have got her if I had n't cut in. I thought
it would help to have her on our side. And, be
sides, I like her. She 's the first sister I 've seen
since we Ve been in this hole that 's had a kind
word for me — or — or sympathized with me !
And — and — if you 're going to be offended — I
shall cry ! "

There were real tears on her lashes, ready to
make good the threat. " Oh, I guess I would n't,"
said Theron, with an approach to his old, half-play
ful manner. " If you like her, that 's the chief thing."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Alice shook her tear-drops away. " No," she
replied, with a wistful smile ; " the chief thing is to
have her like you. She 's as smart as a steel trap,
— that woman is, — and if she took the notion, 1
believe she could help get us a better place."

203

THE ensuing week went by with a buzz and a
whirl, circling about Theron Ware's dizzy con
sciousness like some huge, impalpable teetotum
sent spinning under Sister Soulsby's resolute hands.
Whenever his vagrant memory recurred to it, in
after months, he began by marvelling, and ended
with a shudder of repulsion.

It was a week crowded with events, which
seemed to him to shoot past so swiftly that in
effect they came all of a heap. He never essayed
the task, in retrospect, of arranging them in their
order of sequence. They had, however, a definite
and interdependent chronology which it is worth
the while to trace.

Mrs. Soulsby brought her trunk round to the
parsonage bright and early on Friday morning, and
took up her lodgement in the best bedroom, and
her headquarters in the house at large, with a
cheerful and business-like manner. She desired
nothing so much, she said, as that people should
not put themselves out on her account, or allow
her to get in their way. She appeared to mean
this, too, and to have very good ideas about
securing its realization.

204

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

During both Friday and the following day, in
deed, Theron saw her only at the family meals.
There she displayed a hearty relish for all that
was set before her which quite won Mrs. Ware's
heart, and though she talked rather more than
Theron found himself expecting from a woman,
he could not deny that her conversation was both
seemly and entertaining. She had evidently been
a great traveller, and referred to things she had
seen in Savannah or Montreal or Los Angeles in
as matter-of-fact fashion as he could have spoken
of a visit to Tecumseh. Theron asked her many
questions about these and other far-off cities, and
her answers were all so pat and showed so keen
and clear an eye that he began in spite of himself
to think of her with a certain admiration.

She in turn plied him with inquiries about the
principal pew-holders and members of his congre
gation, — their means, their disposition, and the
measure of their devotion. She put these queries
with such intelligence, and seemed to assimilate his
replies with such an alert understanding, that the
young minister was spurred to put dashes of char
acter in his descriptions, and set forth the idio
syncrasies and distinguishing ear-marks of his flock
with what he felt afterward might have been too
free a tongue. But at the time her fine air of
appreciation led him captive. He gossiped about
his parishioners as if he enjoyed it. He made a
specially happy thumb-nail sketch for her of one of

205

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

his trustees, Erastus Winch, the loud-mouthed,
ostentatiously jovial, and really cold-hearted cheese-
buyer. She was particularly interested in hearing
about this man. The personality of Winch seemed
to have impressed her, and she brought the talk
back to him more than once, and prompted The-
ron to the very threshold of indiscretion in his
confidences on the subject.

Save at meal-times, Sister Soulsby spent the two
days out around among the Methodists of Octa-
vius. She had little or nothing to say about what
she thus saw and heard, but used it as the basis for
still further inquiries. She told more than once,
however, of how she had been pressed here or
there to stay to dinner or supper, and how she had
excused herself. " I Ve knocked about too much,"
she would explain to the Wares, " not to fight shy
of random country cooking. When I find such a
born cook as you are — well — I know when I 'm
well off." Alice flushed with pleased pride at this,
and Theron himself felt that their visitor showed
great good sense. By Saturday noon, the two
women were calling each other by their first names.
Theron learned with a certain interest that Sister
Soulsby's Christian name was Candace.

It was only natural that he should give even
more thought to her than to her quaint and unfa
miliar old Ethiopian name. She was undoubtedly
a very smart woman. To his surprise she had never
introduced in her talk any of the stock religious

206

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and devotional phrases which official Methodists
so universally employed in mutual converse. She
might have been an insurance agent, or a school
teacher, visiting in a purely secular household, so
little parade of cant was there about her.

He caught himself wondering how old she was.
She seemed to have been pretty well over the
whole American continent, and that must take
years of time. Perhaps, however, the exertion of
so muoh travel would tend to age one in appear
ance. Her eyes were still youthful, — decidedly
wise eyes, but still juvenile. They had sparkled
with almost girlish merriment at some of his jokes.
She turned them about a good deal when she
spoke, making their glances fit and illustrate the
things she said. He had never met any one whose
eyes played so constant and prominent a part in
their owner's conversation. Theron had never seen
a play ; but he had encountered the portraits of
famous queens of the drama several times in illus
trated papers or shop windows, and it occurred to
him that some of the more marked contortions of
Sister Soulsby's eyes — notably a trick she had
of rolling them swiftly round and plunging them,
so to speak, into an intent, yearning, one might
almost say devouring, gaze at the speaker — were
probably employed by eminent actresses like
Ristori and Fanny Davenport.

The rest of Sister Soulsby was undoubtedly sub
ordinated in interest to those eyes of hers. Some-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

times her face seemed to be reviving temporarily
a comeliness which had been constant in former
days ; then again it would look decidedly, organ
ically, plain. It was the worn and loose-skinned
face of a nervous, middle-aged woman, who had
had more than her share of trouble, and drank too
much tea. She wore the collar of her dress rather
low ; and Theron found himself wondering at this,
because, though long and expansive, her neck cer
tainly showed more cords and cavities than con
sorted with his vague ideal of statuesque beauty.
Then he wondered at himself for thinking about it,
and abruptly reined up his fancy, only to find that
it was playing with speculations as to whether her
yellowish complexion was due to that tea-drinking
or came to her as a legacy of Southern blood.

He knew that she was born in the South because
she said so. From the same source he learned
that her father had . been a wealthy planter, who
was ruined by the war, and sank into a premature
grave under the weight of his accumulated losses.
The large dark rings around her eyes grew deeper
still in their shadows when she told about this,
and her ordinarily sharp voice took on a mellow
cadence, with a soft, drawling accent, turning &'s
into 0's, and having no r's to speak of. Theron
had imbibed somewhere in early days the convic
tion that the South was the land of romance, of
cavaliers and gallants and black eyes flashing
behind mantillas and outspread fans, and some-

208

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

how when Sister Soulsby used this intonation she
suggested all these things.

But almost all her talk was in another key, —
a brisk, direct, idiomatic manner of speech, with
an intonation hinting at no section in particular.
It was merely that of the city-dweller as distin
guished from the rustic. She was of about Alice's
height, perhaps a shade taller. It did not escape
the attention of the Wares that she wore clothes
of a more stylish cut and a livelier arrangement
of hues than any Alice had ever dared own, even
in lax- minded Tyre. The two talked of this in
their room on Friday night ; and Theron explained
that congregations would tolerate things of this
sort with a stranger which would be sharply re
sented in the case of local folk whom they con
trolled. It was on this occasion that Alice in
turn told Theron she was sure Mrs. Soulsby had
false teeth, — a confidence which she immediately
regretted as an act of treachery to her sex.

On Saturday afternoon, toward evening, Brother
Soulsby arrived, and was guided to the parsonage
by his wife, who had gone to the depot to meet
him. They must have talked over the situation
pretty thoroughly on the way, for by the time the
new-comer had washed his face and hands and
put on a clean collar, Sister Soulsby was ready to
announce her plan of campaign in detail.

Her husband was a man of small stature and,
like herself, of uncertain age. He had a gentle,
14 209

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

if rather dry, clean-shaven face, and wore his dust-
colored hair long behind. His little figure was
clad in black clothes of a distinctively clerical
fashion, and he had a white neck-cloth neatly tied
under his collar. The Wares noted that he looked
clean and amiable rather than intellectually or spirit
ually powerful, as he took the vacant seat between
theirs, and joined them in concentrating attention
upon Mrs. Soulsby.

This lady, holding herself erect and alert on
the edge of the low, big easy-chair, had the air
of presiding over a meeting.

" My idea is," she began, with an easy impli
cation that no one else's idea was needed, " that
your Quarterly Conference, when it meets on
Monday, must be adjourned to Tuesday. We
will have the people all out to-morrow morning to
love-feast, and announcement can be made there,
and at the morning service afterward, that a series
of revival meetings are to be begun that same
evening. Mr. Soulsby and I can take charge in
the evening, and we '11 see to it that that packs the
house, — fills the church to overflowing Monday
evening. Then we '11 quietly turn the meeting into
a debt-raising convention, before they know where
they are, and we '11 wipe off the best part of the
load. Now, don't you see," she turned her eyes
full upon Theron as she spoke, " you want to
hold your Quarterly Conference after this money 's
been raised, not before."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" I see what you mean," Mr. Ware responded
gravely. " But — "

" But what ! " Sister Soulsby interjected, with
vivacity.

" Well," said Theron, picking his words, " in
the first place, it rests with the Presiding Elder to
say whether an adjournment can be made until
Tuesday, not with me."

" That ;s all right. Leave that to me," said the
lady.

" In the second place," Theron went on, still
more hesitatingly, "there seems a certain — what
shall I say? — indirection in — in — "

" In getting them together for a revival, and
springing a debt-raising on them?" Sister Soulsby
put in. " Why, man alive, that 's the best part of
it. You ought to be getting some notion by this
time what these Octavius folks of yours are like.
I Ve only been here two days, but I 've got their
measure down to an allspice. Supposing you
were to announce to-morrow that the debt was to
be raised Monday. How many men with bank-
accounts would turn up, do you think ? You could
put them all in your eye, sir, — all in your eye ! "

"Very possibly you 're right," faltered the young
minister.

"Right? Why, of course I'm right," she said,
with placid confidence. " You Ve got to take
folks as you find them ; and you Ve got to find
them the best way you can. One place can be

211

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

worked, managed, in one way, and another needs
quite a different way, and both ways would be
dead frosts — complete failures — in a third."

Brother Soulsby coughed softly here, and shuf
fled his feet for an instant on the carpet. His
wife resumed her remarks with slightly abated
animation, and at a slower pace.

" My experience," she said, " has shown me
that the Apostle was right. To properly serve
the cause, one must be all things to all men. I
have known very queer things indeed turn out to
be means of grace. You simply carft get along
without some of the wisdom of the serpent. We
are commanded to have it, for that matter. And
now, speaking of that, do you know when the
Presiding Elder arrives in town to-daj', and where
he is going to eat supper and sleep? "

Theron shook his head. "All 1 know is he
isn't likely to come here," he said, and added
sadly, " I 'm afraid he 's not an admirer of
mine."

" Perhaps that 's not all his fault," commented
Sister Soulsby. " I '11 tell you something. He
came in on the same train as my husband, and
that old trustee Pierce of yours was waiting for
him with his buggy, and I saw like a flash what
was in the wind, and the minute the train stopped
I caught the Presiding Elder, and invited him in
your name to come right here and stay; told
him you and Alice were just set on his coming, —

212

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

would n't take no for an answer. Of course he
could n't come, — I knew well enough he had
promised old Pierce, — but we got in our invitation
anyway, and it won't do you any harm. Now,
that 's what I call having some gumption, — wisdom
of the serpent, and so on."

" I 'm sure," remarked Alice, " I should have
been mortified to death if he had come. We lost
the extension-leaf to our table in moving, and four
is all it '11 seat decently."

Sister Soulsby smiled winningly into the wife's
honest face. " Don't you see, dear," she ex
plained patiently, " I only asked him because I
knew he could n't come. A little butter spreads
a long way, if it 's only intelligently warmed."

" It was certainly very ingenious of you," Theron
began almost stiffly. Then he yielded to the
humanities, and with a kindling smile added,
" And it was as kind as kind could be. I 'm
afraid your 're wrong about it 's doing me any good,
but I can see how well you meant it, and I 'm
grateful."

"We could have sneaked in the kitchen table,
perhaps, while he was out in the garden, and put
on the extra long tablecloth," interjected Alice,
musingly.

Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but
without any words this time ; and Alice on the
instant rose, with the remark that she must be
going out to see about supper.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" I 'm going to insist on coming out to help
you," Mrs. Soulsby declared, " as soon as I 've
talked over one little matter with your husband.
Oh, yes, you must let me this time. I insist ! "

As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a
swift and apparently significant glance shot its
way across from Sister Soulsby's roving, eloquent
eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her
husband. He rose to his feet, made some little
explanation about being a gardener himself, and
desiring to inspect more closely some rhododen
drons he had noticed in the garden, and forth
with moved decorously out by the other door into
the front hall. They heard his footsteps on the
gravel beneath the window before Mrs. Soulsby
spoke again.

" You 're right about the Presiding Elder, and
you 're wrong," she said. " He is n't what one
might call precisely in love with you. Oh, I know
the story, — how you got into debt at Tyre, and he
stepped in and insisted on your being denied
Tecumseh and sent here instead."

" He was responsible for that, then, was he ? "
broke in Theron, with contracted brows.

"Why, don't you make any effort to find out
anything at tf///"she asked pertly enough, but
with such obvious good-nature that he could not
but have pleasure in her speech. " Why, of course
he did it ! Who else did you suppose? "

" Well," said the young minister, despondently,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" if he 's as much against me as all that, I might as
well hang up my fiddle and go home."

Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of
impatience. She bent forward, and, lifting her
eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of downward
motion which suggested to his fancy the image
of two eagles in a concerted pounce upon a
lamb.

"My friend," she began, with a new note of
impressiveness in her voice, " if you '11 pardon my
saying it, you have n't got the spunk of a mouse.
If you 're going to lay down, and let everybody
trample over you just as they please, you 're
right ! You might as well go home. But now
here, this is what I wanted to say to you : Do
you just keep your hands off these next few
days, and leave this whole thing to me. I '11
pull it into shipshape for you. No — wait a
minute — don't interrupt now. I have taken a
liking to you. You Ve got brains, and you 've
got human nature in you, and heart. What
you lack is sa&e, — common-sense. You '11 get
that, too, in time, and meanwhile I 'm not going
to stand by and see you cut up and fed to the dogs
for want of it. I '11 get you through this scrape,
and put you on your feet again, right-side-up-with
care, because, as I said, I like you. I like your
wife, too, mind. She 's a good, honest little soul,
and she worships the very ground you tread on.
Of course, as long as people will marry in their

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

teens, the wrong people will get yoked up together.
But that 's neither here nor there. She 's a kind,
sweet little body, and she 's devoted to you, and
it is n't every intellectual man that gets even that
much. But now it 's a go, is it ? You promise to
keep quiet, do you, and leave the whole show ab
solutely to me? Shake hands on it."

Sister Soulsby had risen, and stood now holding
out her hand in a frank, manly fashion. Theron
looked at the hand, and made mental notes that
there were a good many veins discernible on the
small wrist, and that the forearm seemed to swell
out more than would have been expected in a
woman producing such a general effect of lean
ness. He caught the shine of a thin bracelet-
band of gold under the sleeve. A delicate, sig
nificant odor just hinted its presence in the air
about this outstretched arm, — something which
was not a perfume, yet deserved as gracious a
name.

He rose to his feet, and took the proffered hand
with a deliberate gesture, as if he had been cau
tiously weighing all the possible arguments for and
against this momentous compact.

" I promise," he said gravely, and the two palms
squeezed themselves together in an earnest clasp.

" Right you are," exclaimed the lady, once more
with cheery vivacity. " Mind, when it 's all over,
I 'm going to give you a good, serious, downright
talking to, — a regular hoeing-over. I 'm not sure I

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

sha'n't give you a sound shaking into the bargain.
You need it. And now I 'm going out to help
Alice."

The Reverend Mr. Ware remained standing after
his new friend had left the room, and his medita
tive face wore an even unusual air of abstraction.
He strolled aimlessly over, after a time, to the
desk by the window, and stood there looking out
at the slight figure of Brother Soulsby, who was
bending over and attentively regarding some pink
blossoms on a shrub through what seemed to be a
pocket magnifying-glass.

What remained uppermost in his mind was not
this interesting woman's confident pledge of cham
pionship in his material difficulties. He found
himself dwelling instead upon her remark about
the incongruous results of early marriages. He
wondered idly if the little man in the white tie,
fussing out there over that rhododendron-bush, had
figured in her thoughts as an example of these
evils. Then he reflected that they had been men
tioned in clear relation to talk about Alice.

Now that he faced this question, it was as if
he had been consciously ignoring and putting it
aside for a long time. How was it, he asked him
self now, that Alice, who had once seemed so bright
and keen-witted, who had in truth started out im
measurably his superior in swiftness of apprehen
sion and readiness in humorous quips and conceits,
should have grown so dull ? For she was undoubt-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

edly slow to understand things nowadays. Her
absurd lugging in of the extension-table problem,
when the great strategic point of that invitation
foisted upon the Presiding Elder came up, was
only the latest sample of a score of these heavy-
minded exhibitions that recalled themselves to
him. And outsiders were apparently beginning
to notice it. He knew by intuition what those
phrases, "good, honest little soul" and "kind,
sweet little body " signified, when another woman
used them to a husband about his wife. The very
employment of that word " little " was enough, con
sidering that there was scarcely more than a hair's
difference between Mrs. Soulsby and Alice, and that
they were both rather tall than otherwise, as the
stature of women went.

What she had said about the chronic misfor
tunes of intellectual men in such matters gave
added point to those meaning phrases. Nobody
could deny that geniuses and men of conspicu
ous talent had as a rule, all through history, con
tracted unfortunate marriages. In almost every
case where their wives were remembered at all, it
was on account of their abnormal stupidity, or bad
temper, or something of that sort. Take Xantippe,
for example, and Shakespeare's wife, and — and
— well, there was Byron, and Bulwer-Lytton, and
ever so many others.

Of course there was nothing to be done about it.
These things happened, and one could only put

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the best possible face on them, and live one's
appointed life as patiently and contentedly as
might be. And Alice undoubtedly merited all
the praise which had been so generously bestowed
upon her. She was good and honest and kindly,
and there could be no doubt whatever as to her
utter devotion to him. These were tangible,
solid qualities, which must always secure respect
for her. It was true that she no longer seemed
to be very popular among people.' He questioned
whether men, for instance, like Father Forbes and
Dr. Ledsmar would care much about her. Vis
ions of the wifeless and academic calm in which
these men spent their lives — an existence conse
crated to literature and knowledge and familiarity
with all the loftiest and noblest thoughts of the
past — rose and enveloped him in a cloud of de
pression. No such lot would be his ! He must
labor along among ignorant and spiteful narrow-
minded people to the end of his days, pocketing
their insults and fawning upon the harsh hands of
jealous nonentities who happened to be his official
masters, just to keep a roof over his head — or
rather Alice's. He must sacrifice everything to
this, — his ambitions, his passionate desires to do
real good in the world on a large scale, his mental
freedom, yes, even his chance of having truly ele
vating, intellectual friendships. For it was plain
enough that the men whose friendship would be of
genuine and stimulating profit to him would not

219

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

like her. Now that he thought of it, she seemed
latterly to make no friends at all.

Suddenly, as he watched in a blank sort of way
Brother Soulsby take out a penknife, and lop an
offending twig from a rose-bush against the fence,
something occurred to him. There was a curious
exception to that rule of Alice's isolation. She
had made at least one friend. Levi Gorringe
seemed to like her extremely.

As if his mind had been a camera, Theron
snapped a shutter down upon this odd, unbidden
idea, and turned away from the window.

The sounds of an active, almost strenuous con
versation in female voices came from the kitchen.
Theron opened the door noiselessly, and put in
his head, conscious of something furtive in his
intention.

"You must dreen every drop of water off the
spinach, mind, before you put it over, or else — "

It was Sister Soulsby's sharp and penetrating
tones which came to him. Theron closed the
door again, and surrendered himself once more
to the circling whirl of his thoughts.

220

CHAPTER XV

A LOVE- FEAST at nine in the morning opened
the public services of a Sunday still memorable in
the annals of Octavius Methodism.

This ceremony, which four times a year pre
ceded the sessions of the Quarterly Conference,
was not necessarily an event of importance. It
was an occasion upen which the brethren and
sisters who clung to the old-fashioned, primitive
ways of the itinerant circuit-riders, let themselves
go with emphasized independence, putting up
more vehement prayers than usual, and adding a
special fervor of noise to their " Amens ! " and
other interjections, — and that was all.

It was Theron's first love-feast in Octavius,
and as the big class-room in the church basement
began to fill up, and he noted how the men with
ultra radical views and the women clad in the
most ostentatious drabs and grays were crowding
into the front seats, he felt his spirits sinking. He
had literally to force himself from sentence to sen
tence, when the time came for him to rise and
open the proceedings with an exhortation. He
had eagerly offered this function to the Presiding

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Elder, the Rev. Aziel P. Larrabee, who sat in
severe silence on the little platform behind him,
but had been informed that that dignitary would
lead off in giving testimony later on. So Theron,
feeling all the while the hostile eyes of the Elder
burning holes in his back, dragged himself some
how through the task. He had never known any
such difficulty of speech before. The relief was
almost overwhelming when he came to the cus
tomary part where all are adjured to be as brief as
possible in witnessing for the Lord, because the
time belongs to all the people, and the Discipline
forbids the feast to last more than ninety minutes.
He delivered this injunction to brevity with marked
earnestness, and then sat down abruptly.

There was some rather boisterous singing, dur
ing which the stewards, beginning with the plat
form, passed plates of bread cut in small cubes,
and water in big plated pitchers and tumblers,
about among the congregation, threading their
way between the long wooden benches ordinarily
occupied at this hour by the children of the Sun
day-school, and helping each brother and sister in
turn. They held by the old custom, here in Octa-
vius, and all along the seats the sexes alternated,
as they do at a polite dinner- table.

Theron impassively watched the familiar scene.
The early nervousness had passed away. He felt
now that he was not in the least afraid of these
people, even with the Presiding Elder thrown in.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Folks who sang with such unintelligence, and who
threw themselves with such undignified fervor into
this childish business of the bread and water,
could not be formidable antagonists for a man of
intellect. He had never realized before what a
spectacle the Methodist love-feast probably pre
sented to outsiders. What must they think of it !
He had noticed that the Soulsbys sat together,
in the centre and toward the front. Next to
Brother Soulsby sat Alice. He thought she looked
pale and preoccupied, and set it down in passing
to her innate distaste for the sombre garments she
was wearing, and for the company she perforce
found herself in. Another head was in the way,
and for a time Theron did not observe who sat
beside Alice on the other side. When at last he
saw that it was Levi Gorringe, his instinct was to
wonder what the lawyer must be saying to himself
about these noisy and shallow enthusiasts. A re
curring emotion of loyalty to the simple people
among whom, after all, he had lived his whole life,
prompted him to feel that it was n't wholly nice of
Gorringe to come and enjoy this revelation of
their foolish side, as if it were a circus. There
was some vague memory in his mind which asso
ciated Gorringe with other love-feasts, and with a
cynical attitude toward them. Oh, yes ! he had
told how he went to one just for the sake of
sitting beside the girl he admired — and was
pursuing.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The stewards had completed their round, and
the loud, discordant singing came to an end.
There ensued a little pause, during which Theron
turned to the Presiding Elder with a gesture of
invitation to take charge of the further proceed
ings. The Elder responded with another gesture,
calling his attention to something going on in
front.

Brother and Sister Soulsby, to the considerable
surprise of everybody, had risen to their feet, and
were standing in their places, quite motionless, and
with an air of professional self-assurance dimly dis
cernible under a large show of humility. They
stood thus until complete silence had been se
cured. Then the woman, lifting her head, began
to sing. The words were " Rock of Ages," but no
one present had heard the tune to which she
wedded them. Her voice was full and very sweet,
and had in it tender cadences which all her hearers
found touching. She knew how to sing, and she
put forth the words so that each was distinctly
intelligible. There came a part where Brother
Soulsby, lifting his head in turn, took up a tuneful
second to her air. Although the two did not, as
one could hear by listening closely, sing the same
words at the same time, they produced none the
less most .moving and delightful harmonies of
sound.

The .experience was so novel and charming that
listeners ran .ahead in their minds to fix the num-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ber of verses there were in the hymn, and to hope
that none would be left out. Toward the end,
when some of the intolerably self-conceited local
singers, fancying they had caught the tune, started
to join in, they were stopped by an indignant
" sh-h ! " which rose from all parts of the class
room ; and the Soulsbys, with a patient and pensive
kindliness written on their uplifted faces, gave
that verse over again.

What followed seemed obviously restrained and
modified by the effect of this unlooked-for and
tranquillizing overture. The Presiding Elder was
known to enjoy visits to old-fashioned congrega
tions like that of Octavius, where he could indulge
to the full his inner passion for high-pitched pas
sionate invocations and violent spiritual demeanor,
but this time he spoke temperately, almost sooth
ingly. The most tempestuous of the local wit
nesses for the Lord gave in their testimony in
relatively pacific tones, under the influence of the
spell which good music had laid upon the gather
ing. There was the deepest interest as to what
the two visitors would do in this way. Brother
Soulsby spoke first, very briefly and in well-
rounded and well-chosen, if conventional, phrases.
His wife, following him, delivered in a melodious
monotone some equally hackneyed remarks. The
assemblage, listening in rapt attention, felt the
suggestion of reserved power in every sentence she
uttered, and burst forth, as she dropped into her
15 225

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

seat, in a loud chorus of approving ejaculations.
The Soulsbys had captured Octavius with their
first outer skirmish line.

Everything seemed to move forward now with a
new zest and spontaneity. Theron had picked
out for the occasion the best of those sermons
which he had prepared in Tyre, at the time when
he was justifying his ambition to be accounted a
pulpit orator. It -was orthodox enough, but had
been planned as the framework for picturesque
and emotional rhetoric rather than doctrinal edifi
cation. He had never dreamed of trying it on
Octavius before, and only on the yesterday had
quavered at his own daring in choosing it now.
Nothing but the desire to show Sister Soulsby
what was in him had held him to the selection.

Something of this same desire no doubt swayed
and steadied him now in the pulpit. The labored
slowness of his beginning seemed to him to be due
to nervous timidity, until suddenly, looking down
into those big eyes of Sister Soulsby's, which were
bent gravely upon him from where she sat beside
Alice in the minister's pew, he remembered that it
was instead the studied deliberation which art had
taught him. He went on, feeling more and more
that the skill and histrionic power of his best days
were returning to him, were as marked as ever, —
nay, had never triumphed before as they were
triumphing now. The congregation watched and
listened, with open, steadfast eyes and parted lips.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

For the first time in all that weary quarter, their
faces shone. The sustaining sparkle of their gaze
lifted him to a peroration unrivalled in his own
recollection of himself.

He sat down, and bent his head forward upon
the open Bible, breathing hard, but suffused with
a glow of satisfaction. His ears caught the music
of that sighing rustle through the audience which
bespeaks a profound impression. He could
scarcely keep the fingers of his hands, covering
his bowed face in a devotional posture as they
were, from drumming a jubilant tattoo. His pulses
did this in every vein, throbbing with excited
exultation. The insistent whim seized him, as he
still bent thus before his people, to whisper to his
own heart, " At last ! The dogs ! "

The announcement that in the evening a series
of revival meetings was to be inaugurated, had
been made at the love-feast, and it was repeated
now from the pulpit, with the added statement
that for the once the class-meetings usually fol
lowing this morning service would be suspended.
Then Theron came down the steps, conscious after
a fashion that the Presiding Elder had laid a pro
pitiatory hand on his shoulder and spoken amiably
about the sermon, and that several groups of more
or less important parishioners were waiting in the
aisle and the vestibule to shake hands and tell him
how much they had enjoyed the sermon. His
mind perversely kept hold of the thought that all

227

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

this came too late. He politely smiled his way
along out, and, overtaking the Soulsbys and his
wife near the parsonage gate, went in with them.

At the cold, picked-up noonday meal which was
the Sunday rule of the house, Theron rather
expected that his guests would talk about the
sermon, or at any rate about the events of the
morning. A Sabbath chill seemed to have settled
upon both their tongues. They ate almost in
silence, and their sparse remarks touched upon
topics far removed from church affairs. Alice,
too, seemed strangely disinclined to conversation.
The husband knew her face and its varying moods
so well that he could see she was laboring under
some very powerful and deep emotion. No doubt
it was the sermon, the oratorical swing of which
still tingled in his own blood, that had so affected
her. If she had said so, it would have pleased
him, but she said nothing.

After dinner, Brother Soulsby disappeared in
his bedroom, with the remark that he guessed he
would lie down awhile. Sister Soulsby put on her
bonnet, and, explaining that she always prepared
herself for an evening's work by a long solitary
walk, quitted the house. Alice, after she had put
the dinner things away, went upstairs, and stayed
there. Left to himself, Theron spent the after
noon in the easy-chair, and, in the intervals of
confused introspection, read " Recollections of
my Youth " through again from cover to cover.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He went through the remarkable experiences
attending the opening of the revival, when evening
came, as one in a dream. Long before the hour
for the service arrived, the sexton came in to tell
him that the church was already nearly full, and that
it was going to be impossible to preserve any dis
tinction in the matter of pews. When the party
from the parsonage went over — after another cold
and mostly silent meal — it was to find the
interior of the church densely packed, and people
being turned away from the doors.

Theron was supposed to preside over what fol
lowed, and he did sit on the central chair in the
pulpit, between the Presiding Elder and Brother
Soulsby, and on the several needful occasions did
rise and perfunctorily make the formal remarks re
quired of him. The Elder preached a short, but
vigorously phrased sermon. The Soulsbys sang
three or four times — on each occasion with fami
liar hymnal words set to novel, concerted music —
and then separately exhorted the assemblage.
The husband's part seemed well done. If his
speech lacked some of the fire of the divine gird-
ings which older Methodists recalled, it still led
straight, and with kindling fervency, up to. a season
of power. The wife took up the word as he sat
down. She had risen from one of the. side-seats ;
and, speaking as she walked, she moved forward
till she stood within the altar-rail, immediately
under the pulpit, and from this place, facing the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

listening throng, she delivered her harangue.
Those who watched her words most intently got
the least sense of meaning from them. The
phrases were all familiar enough, — " Jesus a very
present help," "Sprinkled by the Blood," " Com
forted by the Word," " Sanctified by the Spirit,"
" Born into the Kingdom," and a hundred others,
— but it was as in the case of her singing : the
words were old ; the music was new.

What Sister Soulsby said did not matter. The
way she said it — the splendid, searching sweep
of her great eyes ; the vibrating roll of her voice,
now full of tears, now scornful, now boldly, jubi
lantly triumphant ; the sympathetic swaying of her
willowy figure under the stress of her eloquence —
was all wonderful. When she had finished, and
stood, flushed and panting, beneath the shadow
of the pulpit, she held up a hand deprecatingly
as the resounding " Amens ! " and " Bless the
Lords ! " began to well up about her.

" You have heard us sing," she said, smiling to
apologize for her shortness of breath. " Now we
want to hear you sing ! "

Her husband had risen as she spoke, and on the
instant, with a far greater volume of voice than
they had hitherto disclosed, the two began " From
Greenland's Icy Mountains," in the old, familiar
tune. It did not need Sister Soulsby's urgent and
dramatic gesture to lift people to their feet. The
whole assemblage sprang up, and, under the guid-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ance of these two powerful leading voices, thun
dered the hymn out as Octavius had never heard
it before.

While its echoes were still alive, the woman
began speaking again. "Don't sit down!" she
cried. " You would stand up if the President of
the United States was going by, even if he was
only going fishing. How much more should you
stand up in honor of living souls passing forward
to find their Saviour ! "

The psychological moment was upon them.
Groans and cries arose, and a palpable ferment
stirred the throng. The exhortation to sinners
to declare themselves, to come to the altar,
was not only on the revivalist's lips : it seemed
to quiver in the very air, to be borne on every
inarticulate exclamation in the clamor of the
brethren. A young woman, with a dazed and
startled look in her eyes, rose in the body of the
church tremblingly hesitated for a moment, and
then, with bowed head and blushing cheeks,
pressed her way out from the end of a crowded
pew and down the aisle to the rail. A triumphant
outburst of welcoming ejaculations swelled to
the roof as she knelt there, and under its impetus
others followed her example. With interspersed
snatches of song and shouted encouragements the
excitement reached its height only when twoscore
people, mostly young, were tightly clustered upon
their knees about the rail, and in the space open-

231

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ing upon the aisle. Above the confusion of peni
tential sobs and moans, and the hysterical murmur-
ings of members whose conviction of entire sanctity
kept them in their seats, could be heard the voices
of the Presiding Elder, the Soulsbys, and the
elderly deacons of the church, who moved about
among the kneeling mourners, bending over them
and patting their shoulders, and calling out to
them : " Fasten your thoughts on Jesus ! " " Oh,
the Precious Blood ! " " Blessed be His Name ! "
" Seek Him, and you shall find Him ! " " Cling
to Jesus, and Him Crucified !"

The Rev. Theron Ware did not, with the others,
descend from the pulpit. Seated where he could
not see Sister Soulsby, he had failed utterly to be
moved by the wave of enthusiasm she had evoked.
What he heard her say disappointed him. He
had expected from her more originality, more
spice of her own idiomatic, individual sort. He
viewed with a cold sense of aloofness the evidences
of her success when they began to come forward
and abase themselves at the altar. The instant
resolve that, come what might, he would not go
down there among them, sprang up ready-made in
his mind. He saw his two companions pass him
and descend the pulpit stairs, and their action
only hardened his resolution. If an excuse were
needed, he was presiding, and the place to preside
in was the pulpit. But he waived in his mind the
whole question of an excuse.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

After a little, he put his hand over his face, lean
ing the elbow forward on the reading-desk. The
scene below would have thrilled him to the marrow
six months, — yes, three months ago. He put a
finger across his eyes now, to half shut it out. The
spectacle of these silly young " mourners " —
kneeling they knew not why, trembling at they
could not tell what, pledging themselves frantically
to dogmas and mysteries they knew nothing of,
under the influence of a hubbub of outcries as
meaningless in their way, and inspiring in much
the same way, as the racket of a fife and drum
corps, — the spectacle saddened and humiliated
him now. He was conscious of a dawning sense
of shame at being even tacitly responsible for such
a thing. His fancy conjured up the idea of Dr.
Ledsmar coming in and beholding this maudlin
and unseemly scene, and he felt his face grow hot
at the bare thought.

Looking through his fingers, Theron all at once
saw something which caught at his breath with a
sharp clutch. Alice had risen from the minister's
pew — the most conspicuous one in the church —
and was moving down the aisle toward the rail,
her uplifted face chalk-like in its whiteness, and her
eyes wide-open, looking straight ahead.

The young pastor could scarcely credit his sight.
He thrust aside his hand, and bent forward, only
to see his wife sink upon her knees among the
rest, and to hear this notable accession to the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" mourners " hailed by a tumult of approving
shoutsi. Then, remembering himself, he drew
back and put up his hand, shutting out the strange
scene altogether. To see nothing at all was a
relief, and under cover he closed his eyes, and bit
his teeth together.

A fresh outburst of thanksgivings, spreading
noisily through the congregation, prompted him to
peer through his fingers again. Levi Gorringe was
making his way down the aisle, — was at the
moment quite in front. Theron found himself
watching this man with the stern composure of a
fatalist. The clamant brethren down below were
stirred to new excitement by the thought that the
sceptical lawyer, so long with them, yet not of
them, had been humbled and won by the out
pourings of the Spirit. Theron's perceptions were
keener. He knew that Gorringe was coming for
ward to kneel beside Alice. The knowledge left
him curiously undisturbed. He saw the lawyer
advance, gently insinuate himself past the form of
some kneeling mourner who was in his way, and
drop on his knees close beside the bowed figure
of Alice. The two touched shoulders as they
bent forward beneath Sister Soulsby's outstretched
hands, held over them as in a blessing. Theron
looked fixedly at them, and professed to himself
that he was barely interested.

A little afterward, he was standing up in his
place, and reading aloud a list of names which one

234

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of the stewards had given him. They were the
names of those who had asked that evening to be
taken into the church as members on probation.
The sounds of the recent excitement were all
hushed now, save as two or three enthusiasts in a
corner raised their voices in abrupt greeting of
each name in its turn, but Theron felt somehow
that this noise had been transferred to the inside
of his head. A continuous buzzing went on there,
so that the sound of his voice was far-off and un
familiar in his ears.

He read through the list — comprising some
fifteen items — and pronounced the names with
great distinctness. It was necessary to take pains
with this, because the only name his blurred eyes
seemed to see anywhere on the foolscap sheet was
that of Levi Gorringe. When he had finished and
was taking his seat, some one began speaking to
him from the body of the church. He saw that
this was the steward, who was explaining to him
that the most important name of the lot — that of
Brother Gorringe — had not been read out.

Theron smiled and shook his head. Then,
when the Presiding Elder touched him on the arm,
and assured him that he had not mentioned the
name in question, he replied quite simply, and
with another smile, "I thought it was the only
name I did read out."

Then he sat down abruptly, and let his head fall
to one side. There were hurried movements

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

inside the pulpit, and people in the audience
had begun to stand up wonderingly, when the
Presiding Elder, with uplifted hands, confronted
them.

" We will omit the Doxology, and depart quietly
after the benediction," he said. " Brother Ware
seems to have been overcome by the heat."

236

CHAPTER XVI

WHEN Theron woke next morning, Alice seemed
to have dressed and left the room, — a thing which
had never happened before.

This fact connected itself at once in his brain
with the recollection of her having made an exhi
bition of herself the previous evening, — going for
ward before all eyes to join the unconverted and
penitent sinners, as if she were some tramp or
shady female, instead of an educated lady, a pro
fessing member from her girlhood, and a minis
ter's wife. It crossed his mind that probably she
had risen and got away noiselessly, for very shame
at looking him. in the face, after such absurd
behavior.

Then he remembered more, and grasped the
situation. He had fainted in church, and had
been brought home and helped to bed. Dim
memories of unaccustomed faces in the bedroom,
of nauseous drugs and hushed voices, came to him
out of the night-time. Now that he thought of it,
he was a sick man. Having settled this, he went
off to sleep again, a feverish and broken sleep, and
remained in this state most of the time for the fol-

237

I
THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

lowing twenty-four hours. In the brief though
numerous intervals of waking, he found certain
things clear in his mind. One was that he was
annoyed with Alice, but would dissemble his feel
ings. Another was that it was much pleasanter to
be ill than to be forced to attend and take part in
those revival meetings. These two ideas came
and went in a lazy, drowsy fashion, mixing them
selves up with other vagrant fancies, yet always
remaining on top.

In the evening the singing from the church next
door filled his room. The Soulsbys' part of it was
worth keeping awake for. He turned over and
deliberately dozed when the congregation sang.

Alice came up a number of times during the
day to ask how he felt, and to bring him broth
or toast- water. On several occasions, when he
heard her step, the perverse inclination mastered
him to shut his eyes, and pretend to be asleep, so
that she might tip-toe out again. She had a
depressed and thoughtful air, and spoke to him
like one whose mind was on something else.
Neither of them alluded to what had happened the
previous evening. Toward the close of the long
day, she came to ask him whether he would prefer
her to remain in the house, instead of attending
the meeting.

" Go, by all means," he said almost curtly.

The Presiding Elder and the Sunday-school
superintendent called early Tuesday morning at

I

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the parsonage to make brotherly inquiries, and
Theron was feeling so much better that he himself
suggested their coining upstairs to see him. The
Elder was in good spirits ; he smiled approvingly,
and even put in a jocose word or two while the
superintendent sketched for the invalid in a cheer
ful way the leading incidents of the previous
evening.

There had been an enormous crowd, even
greater than that of Sunday night, and everybody
had been looking forward to another notable and
exciting season of grace. These expectations were
especially heightened when Sister Soulsby ascended
the pulpit stairs and took charge of the proceed
ings. She deferred to Paul's views about women
preachers on Sundays, she said ; but on week-days
she had just as much right to snatch brands from
the burning as Paul, or Peter, or any other man.
She went on like that, in a breezy, off-hand fashion
which tickled the audience immensely, and led to
the liveliest anticipations of what would happen
when she began upon the evening's harvest of
souls.

But it was something else that happened. At a
signal from Sister Soulsby the stewards got up,
and, in an unconcerned sort of way, went through
the throng to the rear of the church, locked the
doors, and put the keys in their pockets. The
sister dryly explained now to the surprised con
gregation that there was a season for all things,

239

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and that on the present occasion they would sus
pend the glorious work of redeeming fallen human
nature, and take up instead the equally noble
task of raising some fifteen hundred dollars which
the church needed in its business. The doors
would only be opened again when this had been
accomplished.

The brethren were much taken aback by this
trick, and they permitted themselves to exchange
a good many scowling and indignant glances, the
while their professional visitors sang another of
their delightfully novel sacred duets. Its charm
of harmony for once fell upon unsympathetic ears.
But then Sister Soulsby began another monologue,
defending this way of collecting money, chaffing
the assemblage with bright-eyed impudence on
their having been trapped, and scoring, one after
another, neat and jocose little personal points on
local characteristics, at which everybody but the
individual touched grinned broadly. She was so
droll and cheeky, and withal effective in her talk,
that she quite won the crowd over. She told a
story about a woodchuck which fairly brought
down the house.

"A man," she began, with a quizzical twinkle in
her eye, "told me once about hunting a wood-
chuck with a pack of dogs, and they chased it so
hard that it finally escaped only by climbing a
butternut-tree. ' But, my friend,' I said to him,
'woodchucks can't climb trees, — butternut- trees

240

I
THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

or any other kind, — and you know it ! ' All he
said in reply to me was : ' This woodchuck had
to climb a tree ! ' And that 's the way with this
congregation. You think you can't raise $1,500,
but you Ve got to."

So it went on. She set them all laughing ; and
then, with a twist of the eyes and a change of
voice, lo, and behold, she had them nearly crying
in the same breath. Under the pressure of these
jumbled emotions, brethren began to rise up in
their pews and say what they would give. The
wonderful woman had something smart and apt
to say about each fresh contribution, and used it
to screw up the general interest a notch further
toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes
and impromptu exhortations and prayers she kept
the thing whirling, until a sort of duel of generosity
began between two of the most unlikely men, —
Erastus Winch and Levi Gorringe. Everybody
had been surprised when Winch gave his first $50 ;
but when he rose again, half an hour afterward,
and said that, owing to the high public position of
some of the new members on probation, he foresaw
a great future for the church, and so felt moved
to give another $25, there was general amazement.
Moved by a common instinct, all eyes were turned
upon Levi Gorringe, and he, without the slightest
hesitation, stood up and said he would give $TOO.
There was something in his tone which must have
annoyed Brother Winch, for he shot up like a dart,
16 241

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and called out, " Put me down for fifty more ; "
and that brought Gorringe to his feet with an
added $50, and then the two went on raising each
Other till the assemblage was agape with admiring
stupefaction.

This gladiatorial combat might have been going
on till now, the Sunday-school superintendent con
cluded, if Winch had n't subsided. The amount
of the contributions hadn't been figured up yet,
for Sister Soulsby kept the list; but there had
been a tremendous lot of money raised. Of that
there could be no doubt.

The Presiding Elder now told Theron that the
Quarterly Conference had been adjourned yester
day till to-day. He and Brother Davis were even
now on their way to attend the session in the
church next door. The Elder added, with an
obvious kindly significance, that though Theron
was too ill to attend it, he guessed his absence
would do him no harm. Then the two men left
the room, and Theron went to sleep again.

Another almost blank period ensued, this time
lasting for forty- eight hours. The young minister
was enfolded in the coils of a fever of some sort,
which Brother Soulsby, who had dabbled consider
ably in medicine, admitted that he was puzzled
about. Sometimes he thought that it was typhoid,
and then again there were symptoms which looked
suspiciously like brain fever. The Methodists of
Octavius counted no physician among their num-

242

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

bers, and when, on the second day, Alice grew
scared, and decided, with Brother Soulsby's assent,
to call in professional advice, the only doctor's
name she could recall was that of Ledsmar. She
was conscious of an instinctive dislike for the vague
image of him her fancy had conjured up, but the
reflection that he was Theron's friend, and so
probably would be more moderate in his charges,
decided her.

Brother Soulsby showed a most comforting tact
and swiftness of apprehension when Alice, in men
tioning Dr. Ledsmar's name, disclosed by her man
ner a fear that his being sent for would create
talk among the church people. He volunteered
at once to act as messenger himself, and, with no
better guide than her dim hints at direction,
found the doctor and brought him back to the
parsonage.

Dr. Ledsmar expressly disclaimed to Soulsby all
pretence of professional skill, and made him under
stand that he went along solely because he liked
Mr. Ware, and was interested in him, and in any
case would probably be of as much use as the
wisest of strange physicians, — a view which the
little revivalist received with comprehending nods
of tacit acquiescence. Ledsmar came, and was
taken up to the sick-room. He sat on the bed
side and talked with Theron awhile, and then
went downstairs again. To Alice's anxious inqui
ries, he replied that it seemed to him merely a

243

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

case of over-work and over-worry, about which
there was not the slightest occasion for alarm.

"But he says the strangest things," the wife put
in. " He has been quite delirious at times."

" That means only that his brain is taking a rest
as well as his body," remarked Ledsmar. " That
is Nature's way of securing an equilibrium of re
pose — of recuperation. He will come out of it
with his mind all the fresher and clearer."

" I don't believe he knows shucks ! " was Alice's
comment when she closed the street door upon
Dr. Ledsmar. " Anybody could have come in and
looked at a sick man and said, ' Leave him alone.'
You expect something more from a doctor. It 's
his business to say what to do. And I suppose
he '11 charge two dollars for just telling me that
my husband was resting ! "

" No," said Brother Soulsby, " he said he never
practised, and that he would come only as a
friend."

" Well, it is n't my idea of a friend, — not to
prescribe a single thing," protested Alice.

Yet it seemed that no prescription was needed,
after all. The next morning Theron woke to find
himself feeling quite restored in spirits and nerves.
He sat up in bed, and after an instant of weakly
giddiness, recognized that he was all right again.
Greatly pleased, he got up, and proceeded to
dress himself. There were little recurring hints
of faintness and vertigo, while he was shaving, but

244

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

he had the sense to refer these to the fact that he
was very, very hungry. He went downstairs, and
smiled with the pleased pride of a child at the
surprise which his appearance at the door created.
Alice and the Soulsbys were at breakfast. He
joined them, and ate voraciously, declaring that it
was worth a month's illness to have things taste so
good once more.

"You still look white as a sheet," said Alice,
warningly. " If I were you, I 'd be careful in my
diet for a spell yet."

For answer, Theron let Sister Soulsby help him
again to ham and eggs. He talked exclusively to
Sister Soulsby, or rather invited her by his manner
to talk to him, and listened and watched her with
indolent content. There was a sort of happy and
purified languor in his physical and mental being,
which needed and appreciated just this, — to sit
next a bright and attractive woman at a good
breakfast, and be ministered to by her sprightly
conversation, by the flash of her informing and
inspiring eyes, and the nameless sense of sup
port and repose which her near proximity exhaled.
He felt himself figuratively leaning against Sister
Soulsby's buoyant personality, and resting.

Brother Soulsby, like the intelligent creature he
was, ate his breakfast in peace ; but Alice would
interpose remarks from time to time. Theron was
conscious of a certain annoyance at this, and knew
that he was showing it by an exaggerated display

245

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of interest in everything Sister Soulsby said, and
persisted in it. There trembled in the background
of his thoughts ever and again the recollection of
a grievance against his wife, — an offence which she
had committed, — but he put it aside as something
to be grappled and dealt with when he felt again
like taking up the serious and disagreeable things
of life. For the moment, he desired only to be
amused by Sister Soulsby. Her casual mention
of the fact that she and her husband were taking
their departure that very day, appealed to him as
an added reason for devoting his entire attention
to her.

"You mustn't forget that famous talking-to you
threatened me with, — that •' regular hoeing-over,'
you know," he reminded her, when he found him
self alone with her after breakfast. He smiled as
he spoke, in frank enjoyment of the prospect.

Sister Soulsby nodded, and aided with a roll of
her eyes the effect of mock-menace in her uplifted
forefinger. " Oh, never fear," she cried. " You '11
catch it hot and strong. But that '11 keep till after
noon. Tell me, do you feel strong enough to go
in next door and attend the trustees' meeting this
forenoon? It 's rather important that you should
be there, if you can spur yourself up to it. By the
way, you have n't asked what happened at the
Quarterly Conference yesterday."

Theron sighed, and made a little grimace of
repugnance. " If you knew how little I cared ! "

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

he said. " I did hope you 'd forget all about men
tioning that, — and everything else connected with
— the next door. You talk so much more inter
estingly about other things."

" Here 's gratitude for you ! " exclaimed Sister
Soulsby, with a gay simulation of despair. " Why,
man alive, do you know what I Ve done for you ?
I got around on the Presiding Elder's blind side,
I captured old Pierce, I wound Winch right around
my little finger, I worked two or three of the class-
leaders — all on your account. The result was you
went through as if you 'd had your ears pinned
back, and been greased all over. You Ve got an
extra hundred dollars added to your salary; do
you hear? On the sixth question of the order of
business the Elder ruled that the recommendation
of the last conference's estimating committee could
be revised (between ourselves he was wrong, but
that does n't matter) , and so you 're in clover.
And very friendly things were said about you,
too."

" It was very kind of you," said Theron. " I am
really extremely grateful to you." He shook her
by the hand to make up for what he realized to be
a lack of fervor in his tones.

" Well, then," Sister Soulsby replied, " you pull
yourself together, and take your place as chairman
of the trustees' meeting, and see to it that, what
ever comes up, you side with old Pierce and
Winch."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Oh, they 're my friends now, are they? " asked
Theron, with a faint play of irony about his lips.

"Yes, that's your ticket this election," she
answered briskly, " and mind you vote it straight.
Don't bother about reasons now. Just take it
from me, as the song says, < that things have
changed since Willie died.' That 's all. And
then come back here, and this afternoon we '11
have a good old-fashioned jaw."

The Rev. Mr. Ware, walking with ostentatious
feebleness, and forcing a conventional smile upon
his wan face, duly made his unexpected appear
ance at the trustees' meeting in one of the smaller
class-rooms. He received their congratulations
gravely, and shook hands with all three. It re
quired an effort to do this impartially, because,
upon sight of Levi Gorringe, there rose up sud
denly within him an emotion of fierce dislike and
enmity. In some enigmatic way his thoughts had
kept themselves away from Gorringe ever since
Sunday evening. Now they concentrated with
furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron
seemed able in a flash of time to co-ordinate many
recollections of Gorringe, — the early liking Alice
had professed for him, the mystery of those pur
chased plants in her garden, the story of the girl
he had lost in church, his offer to lend him money,
the way in which he had sat beside Alice at the
love-feast and followed her to the altar-rail in
the evening. These raced abreast through the

248

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

young minister's brain, yet with each its own
image, and its relation to the others clearly
defined.

He found the nerve, all the same, to take this
third trustee by the hand, and to thank him for
his congratulations, and even to say, with a sur
face smile of welcome, "It is Brother Gorringe,
now, I remember."

The work before the meeting was chiefly of a
routine kind. In most places this would have
been transacted by the stewards ; but in Octavius
these minor officials had degenerated into mere
ceremonial abstractions, who humbly ratified, or by
arrangement anticipated, the will of the powerful,
mortgage- owning trustees. Theron sat languidly
at the head of the table while these common
place matters passed in their course, noting the
intonations of Gorringe's voice as he read from
his secretary's book, and finding his ear displeased
by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial
affairs, and the minister, feeling faint and weary in
the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted
on his coming.

All at once he sat up straight, with an instinc
tive warning in his mind that here was the thing.
Gorringe had 4aken up the subject of the "debt-
raising " evening, and read out its essentials as
they had been embodied in a report of the stew
ards. The gross sum obtained, in cash and prom
ises, was $1,560. The stewards had collected of

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

this a trifle less than half, but hoped to get it all
in during the ensuing quarter. There were, also,
the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Soulsby for $150, and the
increases of $100 in the pastor's salary and $25
in the apportioned contribution of the charge
toward the Presiding Elder's maintenance, the
two latter items of which the Quarterly Confer
ence had sanctioned.

" I want to hear the names of the subscribers
and their amounts read out," put in Brother
Pierce.

When this was done, it became apparent that
much more than half of the entire amount had
been offered by two men. Levi Gorringe's $450
and Erastus Winch's $425 left only $690 to be
divided up among some seventy or eighty other
members of the congregation.

Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of
these subordinate names. " They 're of no concern
whatever," he said, despite the fact that his own
might have been reached in time. " Those first
names are what I was getting at. Have those two
first amounts, the big ones, be'n paid?"

" One has — the other not," replied Gorringe.

"./V^-cisely," remarked the senior trustee.
" And I 'm goin' to move that it need n't be paid,
either. When Brother Winch, here, began hollerin'
out those extra twenty-fives and fifties, that even
ing, it was under a complete misapprehension.
He 'd be'n on the cheese board that same Mon-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

day afternoon, and he 'd done what he thought
was a mighty big stroke of business, and he felt
liberal according. I know just what that feelin' is
myself. If I 'd be'n makin' a mint o' money,
instead o' losin' all the while, as I do, I 'd 'a' done
just the same. But the next day, lo, and behold,
Brother Winch found that it was all a mistake, —
he had n't made a single penny."

" Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction," put
in Erastus Winch, defiantly.

"Just so," Brother Pierce went on. "He lost
money. You have his own word for it. Well,
then, I say it would be a burning shame for us to
consent to touch one penny of what he offered to
give, in the fulness of his heart, while he was
laborin' under that delusion. And I move he be
not asked for it. We 've got quite as much as we
need, without it. I put my motion."

"That is, you don't put it," suggested Winch,
correctingly. " You move it, and Brother Ware,
whom we 're all so glad to see able to come and
preside, — he '11 put it."

There was a moment's silence. " You 've heard
the motion," said Theron, tentatively, and then
paused for possible remarks. He was not going
to meddle in this thing himself, and Gorringe was
the only other who might have an opinion to offer.
The necessities of the situation forced him to
glance at the lawyer inquiringly. He did so, and
turned his eyes away again like a shot. Gorringe

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

was looking him squarely in the face, and the look
was freighted with satirical contempt.

The young minister spoke between clinched
teeth. " All those in favor will say Aye."

Brothers Pierce and Winch put up a simulta
neous and confident " Aye."

" No, you don't ! " interposed the lawyer, with
deliberate, sneering emphasis. " I decidedly pro
test against Winch's voting. He 's directly inter
ested, and he must n't vote. Your chairman knows
that perfectly well."

" Yes, I think Brother Winch ought not to vote,"
decided Theron, with great calmness. He saw
now what was coming, and underneath his surface
composure there were sharp flutterings.

" Very well, then," said Gorringe. " I vote No,
and it 's a tie. It rests with the chairman now to
cast the deciding vote, and say whether this inter
esting arrangement shall go through or not."

"Me?" said Theron, eying the lawyer with a
cool self-control which had come all at once to
him. " Me ? Oh, I vote Aye."

252

CHAPTER XVII

"WELL, I did what you told me to do," Theron
Ware remarked to Sister Soulsby, when at last they
found themselves alone in the sitting-room after
the midday meal.

It had taken not a little strategic skirmishing to
secure the room to themselves, for the hospitable
Alice, much touched by the thought of her new
friend's departure that very evening, had gladly
proposed to let all the work stand over until night,
and devote herself entirely to Sister Soulsby.
When, finally, Brother Soulsby conceived and deftly
executed the coup of interesting her in the budding
of roses, and then leading her off into the garden
to see with her own eyes how it was done, Theron
had a sense of being left alone with a co-conspira
tor. The notion impelled him to plunge at once
into the heart of their mystery.

" I did what you told me to do," he repeated,
looking up from his low easy-chair to where she
sat by the desk ; " and I dare say you won't be
surprised when I add that I have no respect for
myself for doing it."

" And yet you would go and do it right over
again, eh? " the woman said, in bright, pert tones,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

nodding her head, and smiling at him with roguish,
comprehending eyes. " Yes, that 's the way we 're
built. We spend our lives doing that sort of
thing."

" I don't know that you would precisely grasp
my meaning," said the young minister, with a
polite effort in his words to mask the untoward
side of the suggestion. " It is a matter of con
science with me ; and I am pained and shocked
at myself."

Sister Soulsby drummed for an absent moment
with her thin, nervous fingers on the desk-top.
" I guess maybe you 'd better go and lie down
again," she said gently. " You 're a sick man,
still, and it's no good your worrying your head just
now with things of this sort. You '11 see them dif
ferently when you 're quite yourself again."

" No, no," pleaded Theron. " Do let us have
our talk out ! I 'm all right. My mind is clear as
a bell. Truly, I 've really counted on this talk
with you."

" But there 's something else to talk about, is n't
there, besides — besides your conscience?" she
asked. Her eyes bent upon him a kindly pressure
as she spoke, which took all possible harshness from
her meaning.

Theron answered the glance rather than her
words. " I know that you are my friend," he said
simply.

Sister Soulsby straightened herself, and looked

254

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

down upon him with a new intentness. " Well,
then," she began, "let's thrash this thing out right
now, and be done with it. You say it 's hurt your
conscience to do just one little hundredth part of
what there was to be done here. Ask yourself
what you mean by that. Mind, I 'm not quarrel
ling, and I 'm not thinking about anything except
just your own state of mind. You think you soiled
your hands by doing what you did. That is to
say, you wanted all the dirty work done by other
people. That 's it, is n't it ? "

The Rev. Mr. Ware sat up, in turn, and looked
doubtingly into his companion's face.

" Oh, we were going to be frank, you know," she
added, with a pleasant play of mingled mirth and
honest liking in her eyes.

'• No," he said, picking his words, " my point
would rather be that — that there ought not to
have been any of what you yourself call this — this
' dirty work.' That is my feeling."

" Now we 're getting at it," said Sister Soulsby,
briskly. " My dear friend, you might just as well
say that potatoes are unclean and unfit to eat
because manure is put into the ground they grow
in. Just look at the case. Your church here was
running behind every year. Your people had got
into a habit of putting in nickels instead of dimes,
and letting you sweat for the difference. That 's a
habit, like tobacco, or biting your finger-nails, or
anything else. Either you were all to come to

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

smash here, or the people had to be shaken up,
stood on their heads, broken of their habit. It 's
my business — mine and Soulsby's — to do that
sort of thing. We came here and we did it, —
did it up brown, too. We not only raised all the
money the church needs, and to spare, but I took
a personal shine to you, and went out of my way
to fix up things for you. It is n't only the extra
hundred dollars, but the whole tone of the congre
gation is changed toward you now. You '11 see
that they '11 be asking to have you back here, next
spring. And you 're solid with your Presiding
Elder, too. Well, now, tell me straight, — is that
worth while, or not? "

" I 've told you that I am very grateful,"
answered the minister, aand I say it again, and
I shall never be tired of repeating it. But — but
it was the means I had in mind."

" Quite so," rejoined the sister, patiently. " If
you saw the way a hotel dinner was cooked, you
would n't be able to stomach it. Did you ever see
a play? In a theatre, I mean. I supposed not.
But you '11 understand when I say that the per
formance looks one way from where the audience
sit, and quite a different way when you are behind
the scenes. There you see that the trees and
houses are cloth, and the moon is tissue paper,
and the flying fairy is a middle-aged woman strung
up on a rope. That does n't prove that the play,
out in front, is n't beautiful and affecting, and all

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

that. It only shows that everything in this world
is produced by machinery — by organization.
The trouble is that you 've been let in on the
stage, behind the scenes, so to speak, and you 're
so green — if you '11 pardon me — that you want to
sit down and cry because the trees are cloth, and
the rnoon is a lantern. And / say, Don't be such
a goose !"

" I see what you mean," Theron said, with an
answering smile. He added, more gravely, " All
the same, the Winch business seems to me — "

" Now the Winch business is my own affair,"
Sister Soulsby broke in abruptly. " I take all the
responsibility for that. You need know nothing
about it. You simply voted as you did on the merits
of the case as he presented them, — that 's all."

"But — " Theron began, and then paused.
Something had occurred to him, and he knitted
his brows to follow its course of expansion in his
mind. Suddenly he raised his head. " Then you
arranged with Winch to make those bogus offers
— just to lead others on?" he demanded.

Sister Soulsby's large eyes beamed down upon
him in reply, at first in open merriment, then more
soberly, till their regard was almost pensive.

" Let us talk of something else," she said. " All
that is past and gone. It has nothing to do with
you, anyway. I 've got some advice to give you
about keeping up this grip you Ve got on your
people."

17 257

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The young minister had risen to his feet while
she spoke. He put his hands in his pockets, and
with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the
room. After a turn or two he came to the desk,
and leaned against it.

" I doubt if it 's worth while going into that," he
said, in the solemn tone of one who feels that an
irrevocable thing is being uttered. She waited to
hear more, apparently. " I think I shall go away
— give up the ministry," he added.

Sister Soulsby's eyes revealed no such shock of
consternation as he, unconsciously, had looked for.
They remained quite calm ; and when she spoke,
they deepened, to fit her speech, with what he read
to be a gaze of affectionate melancholy, — one
might say pity. She shook her head slowly.

" No — don't let any one else hear you say
that," she replied. " My poor young friend, it 's
no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to
school yourself to move along smoothly, and not
fret, and get the best of what 's going. I Ve
known others who felt as you do, — of course
there are times when every young man of brains
and high notions feels that way, — but there 's no
help for it. Those who tried to get out only
broke themselves. Those who stayed in, and
made the best of it — well, one of them will be a
bishop in another ten years."

Theron had started walking again. "But the
moral degradation of it !" he snapped out at her,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

over his shoulder. " I 'd rather earn the meanest
living, at an honest trade, and be free from it."

" That may all be," responded Sister Soulsby.
" But it is n't a question of what you 'd rather do.
It 's what you can do. How could you earn a
living? What trade or business do you suppose
you could take up now, and get a living out of?
Not one, my man, not one."

Theron stopped and stared at her. This view
of his capabilities came upon him with the force
and effect of a blow.

" I don't discover, myself," he began stum-
blingly, " that I 'm so conspicuously inferior to the
men I see about me who do make livings, and
very good ones, too."

" Of course you 're not," she replied with easy
promptness ; " you 're greatly the other way, or I
shouldn't be taking this trouble with you. But
you 're what you are because you 're where you are.
The moment you try on being somewhere else,
you 're done for. In all this world nobody else
comes to such unmerciful and universal grief as
the unfrocked priest."

The phrase sent Theron's fancy roving. " I
know a Catholic priest," he said irrelevantly, "who
doesn't believe an atom in — in things."

"Very likely," said Sister Soulsby. "Most of
us do. But you don't hear him talking about
going and earning his living, I '11 bet ! Or if he
does, he takes powerful good care not to go, all the

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same. They Ve got horse-sense, those priests.
They 're artists, too. They know how to allow for
the machinery behind the scenes."

"But it's all so different," urged the young
minister ; " the same things are not expected of
them. Now I sat the other night and watched
those people you got up around the altar-rail,
groaning and shouting and crying, and the others
jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister
Lovejoy — did you see her? — coming out of her
pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle, with her
eyes shut, like a whirling dervish — I positively
believe it was all that made me ill. I could n't
stand it. I can't stand it now. I won't go back
to it ! Nothing shall make me ! "

" Oh-h, yes, you will," she rejoined sooth
ingly. " There 's nothing else to do. Just put a
good face on it, and make up your mind to get
through by treading on as few corns as possible,
and keeping your own toes well in, and you '11 be
surprised how easy it '11 all come to be. You were
speaking of the revival business. Now that ex
emplifies just what I was saying, — it 's a part of our
machinery. Now a church is like everything else,
— it 's got to have a boss, a head, an authority of
some sort, that people will listen to and mind.
The Catholics are different, as you say. Their
church is chuck-full of authority, — all the way from
the Pope down to the priest, — and accordingly
they do as they 're told. But the Protestants, —

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your Methodists most of all, — they say ' No, we
won't have any authority, we won't obey any boss.'
Very well, what happens ? We who are responsible
for running the thing, and raising the money and
so on, — we have to put on a spurt every once in a
while, and work up a general state of excitement ;
and while it 's going, don't you see that that is the
authority, the motive power, whatever you like to
call it, by which things are done ? Other denomi
nations don't need it. We do, and that 's why
we Ve got it."

"But the mean dishonesty of it all!" Theron
broke forth. He moved about again, his bowed
face drawn as with bodily suffering. " The low
born tricks, the hypocrisies ! I feel as if I could
never so much as look at these people here again
without disgust."

" Oh, now that 's where you make your mis
take," Sister Soulsby put in placidly. " These
people of yours are not a whit worse than other
people. They Ve got their good streaks and their
bad streaks, just like the rest of us. Take them
by and large, they 're quite on a par with other
folks the whole country through."

" I don't believe there 's another congregation
in the Conference where — where this sort of
thing would have been needed, or, I might say,
tolerated," insisted Theron.

" Perhaps you 're right," the other assented ;
"but that only shows that your people here are

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

different from the others — not that they 're worse.
You don't seem to realize : Octavius, so far as the
Methodists are concerned, is twenty or thirty years
behind the times. Now that has its advantages
and its disadvantages. The church here is tough
and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone ;
and it does ministers from other more niminy-
piminy places all sorts of good to come here once
in a while and rub themselves up against it. It
scours the rust and mildew off from their piety,
and they go back singing and shouting. But of
course it 's had a different effect with you. You 're
razor-steel instead of scythe-steel, and the grind
ing 's been too rough and violent for you. But
you see what I mean. These people here really
take their primitive Methodism seriously. To
them the profession of entire sanctification is truly a
genuine thing. Well, don't you see, when people
just know that they 're saved, it does n't seem to
them to matter so much what they do. They feel
that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted
in the interest of people so supernaturally good as
they are. That 's pure human nature. It 's always
been like that."

Theron paused in his walk to look absently at
her. "That thought," he said, in a vague, slow
way, " seems to be springing up in my path,
whichever way I turn. It oppresses me, and yet
it fascinates me, — this idea that the dead men
have known more than we know, done more

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than we do ; that there is nothing new any
where ; that — "

" Never mind the dead men," interposed Sister
Soulsby. " Just you come and sit down here. I
hate to have you straddling about the room when
I 'm trying to talk to you."

Theron obeyed, and as he sank into the low
seat, Sister Soulsby drew up her chair, and put her
hand on his shoulder. Her gaze rested upon his
with impressive steadiness.

" And now I want to talk seriously to you, as a
friend," she began. " You must n't breathe to any
living soul the shadow of a hint of this nonsense
about leaving the ministry. I could see how you
were feeling, — I saw the book you were reading
the first time I entered this room, — and that
made me like you ; only I expected to find you
mixing up more worldly gumption with your
Renan. Well, perhaps I like you all the better
for not having it — for being so delightfully fresh.
At any rate, that made me sail in and straighten
your affairs for you. And now, for God's sake,
keep them straight. Just put all notions of any
thing else out of your head. Watch your chief
men and women, and be friends with them.
Keep your eye open for what they think you
ought to do, and do it. Have your own ideas as
much as you like, read what you like, say ' Damn '
under your breath as much as you like, but don't
let go of your job. I Ve knocked about too much,

263

and I Ve seen too many promising young fellows
cut their own throats for pure moonshine, not to
have a right to say that."

Theron could not be insensible to the friendly
hand on his shoulder, or to the strenuous sincerity
of the voice which thus adjured him.

" Well," he said vaguely, smiling up into her
earnest eyes, "if we agree that it is moonshine."

" See here ! " she exclaimed, with renewed ani
mation, patting his shoulder in a brisk, automatic
way, to point the beginnings of her confidences :
" I '11 tell you something. It 's about myself.
I Ve got a religion of my own, and it 's got just
one plank in it, and that is that the time to sepa
rate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment
Day, and that it can't be done a minute before."

The young minister took in the thought, and
turned it about in his mind, and smiled upon it.

" And that brings me to what I 'm going to tell
you," Sister Soulsby continued. She leaned back in
her chair, and crossed her knees so that one well-
shaped and artistically shod foot poised itself close
to Theron's hand. Her eyes dwelt upon his face
with an engaging candor.

" I began life," she said, "as a girl by running
away from a stupid home with a man that I knew
was married already. After that, I supported my
self for a good many years, — generally, at first, on
the stage. I Ve been a front-ranker in Amazon
ballets, and I Ve been leading lady in comic opera

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

companies out West. I 've told fortunes in one
room of a mining- camp hotel where the biggest
game of faro in the Territory went on in another.
I 've been a professional clairvoyant, and I Ve been
a professional medium, and I 've been within one
vote of being indicted by a grand jury, and the
money that bought that vote was put up by the
smartest and most famous train-gambler between
Omaha and 'Frisco, a gentleman who died in his
boots and took three sheriff's deputies along with
him to Kingdom-Come. Now, that 's my record."

Theron looked earnestly at her, and said nothing.

" And now take Soulsby, " she went on. " Of
course I take it for granted there 's a good deal
that he has never felt called upon to mention.
He has n't what you may call a talkative tempera
ment. But there is also a good deal that I do
know. He 's been an actor, too, and to this day
I 'd back him against Edwin Booth himself to
recite ' Clarence's Dream.' And he 's been a
medium, and then he was a travelling phrenologist,
and for a long time he was advance agent for a
British Blondes show, and when I first saw him he
was lecturing on female diseases — and he had
his little turn with a grand jury too. In fact, he
was what you may call a regular bad old rooster."

Again Theron suffered the pause to lapse with
out comment, — save for an amorphous sort of
conversation which he felt to be going on between
his eyes and those of Sister Soulsby.

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"Well, then," she resumed, "so much for us
apart. Now about us together. We liked each
other from the start. We compared notes, and
we found that we had both soured on living by
fakes, and that we were tired of the road, and
wanted to settle down and be respectable in our
old age. We had a little money, — enough to see
us through a year or two. Soulsby had always
hungered and longed to own a garden and raise
flowers, and had never been able to stay long
enough in one place to see so much as a bean-pod
ripen. So we took a little place in a quiet coun
try village down on the Southern Tier, and he
planted everything three deep all over the place,
and I bought a roomful of cheap good books,
and we started in. We took to it like ducks to
water for a while, and I don't say that we could n't
have stood it out, just doing nothing, to this very
day ; but as luck would have it, during the first
winter there was a revival at the local Methodist
church, and we went every evening, — at first just
to kill time, and then because we found we liked
the noise and excitement and general racket of the
thing. After it was all over each of us found that
the other had been mighty near going up to the
rail and joining the mourners. And another thing
had occurred to each of us, too, — that is, what
tremendous improvements there were possible in
the way that amateur revivalist worked up his
business. This stuck in our crops, and we figured

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

on it all through the winter. — Well, to make a long
story short, we finally went into the thing ourselves."

" Tell me one thing," interposed Theron. • " I 'm
anxious to understand it all as we go along.
Were you and he at any time sincerely converted?
— that is, I mean, genuinely convicted of sin
and conscious of — you know what I mean ! "

" Oh, bless you, yes," responded Sister Soulsby.
" Not only once — dozens of times — I may say
every time. We could n't do good work if we
were n't. But that 's a matter of temperament —
of emotions."

" Precisely. That was what I was getting at,"
explained Theron.

" Well, then, hear what / was getting at," she
went on. "You were talking very loudly here
about frauds and hypocrisies and so on, a few
minutes ago. Now / say that Soulsby and I do
good, and that we 're good fellows. Now take
him, for example. There is n't a better citizen in
all Chemung County than he is, or a kindlier
neighbor, or a better or more charitable man.
I 've known him to stay up a whole winter's night
in a poor Irishman's stinking and freezing stable,
trying to save his cart-horse for him, that had
been seized with some sort of fit. The man's
whole livelihood, and his family's, was in that
horse ; and when it died, Soulsby bought him an
other, and never told even me about it. Now that
I call real piety, if you like."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" So do I," put in Theron, cordially.

"And this question of fraud," pursued his com
panion, — " look at it in this light. You heard us
sing. Well, now, I was a singer, of course, but
Soulsby hardly knew one note from another. I
taught him to sing, and he went at it patiently and
diligently, like a little man. And I invented that
scheme of finding tunes which the crowd did n't
know, and so could n't break in on and smother.
I simply took Chopin, — he is full of sixths, you
know, — and I got all sorts of melodies out of his
waltzes and mazurkas and nocturnes and so on,
and I trained Soulsby just to sing those sixths so
as to make the harmony, and there you are. He
could n't sing by himself any more than a crow,
but he 's got those sixths of his down to a hair.
Now that 's machinery, management, organization.
We take these tunes, written by a devil-may-care
Pole who was living with George Sand openly at
the time, and pass 'em off on the brethren for
hymns. It 's a fraud, yes ; but it 's a good fraud.
So they are all good frauds. I say frankly that
I 'm glad that the change and the chance came to
help Soulsby and me to be good frauds."

" And the point is that I 'm to be a good fraud,
too," commented the young minister.

She had risen, and he got to his feet as well.
He instinctively sought for her hand, and pressed
it warmly, and held it in both his, with an exuber
ance of gratitude and liking in his manner.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Sister Soulsby danced her eyes at him with a
saucy little shake of the head. " I 'm afraid you '11
never make a really good fraud," she said. "You
have n't got it in you. Your intentions are all right,
but your execution is hopelessly clumsy. I came
up to your bedroom there twice while you were
sick, just to say ' howdy,' and you kept your eyes
shut, and all the while a blind horse could have
told that you were wide awake."

" I must have thought it was my wife," said
Theron.

269

PART III

CHAPTER XVIII

WHEN the lingering dusk finally settled down
upon this long summer evening, the train bearing
the Soulsbys homeward was already some score of
miles on its way, and the Methodists- of Octavius
had nearly finished their weekly prayer-meeting.

After the stirring events of the revival, it was
only to be expected that this routine, home-made
affair should suffer from a reaction. The attend
ance was larger than usual, perhaps, but the pro
ceedings were spiritless and tame. Neither the
pastor nor his wife was present at the beginning, and
the class-leader upon whom control devolved made
but feeble headway against the spell of inertia which
the hot night-air laid upon the gathering. Long
pauses intervened between the perfunctory praise-
offerings and supplications, and the hymns weariedly
raised from time to time fell again in languor by
the wayside.

Alice came in just as people were beginning to
hope that some one would start the Doxology,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and bring matters to a close. Her appearance
apparently suggested this to the class-leader, for
in a few moments the meeting had been dismissed,
and some of the members, on their way out, were
shaking hands with their minister's wife, and ex
pressing the polite hope that he was better. The
worried look in her face, and the obvious stains of
recent tears upon her cheeks imparted an added
point and fervor to these inquiries, but she replied
to all in tones of studied tranquillity that, although
not feeling well enough to attend prayer-meeting,
Brother Ware was steadily recovering strength, and
confidently expected to be in complete health by
Sunday. They left her, and could hardly wait to
get into the vestibule to ask one another in whis
pers what on earth she could have been crying
about.

Meanwhile Brother Ware improved his conva
lescent state by pacing slowly up and down under
the elms on the side of the street opposite the
Catholic church. There were no houses here for
a block and more ; the sidewalk was broken in
many places, so that passers-by avoided it ; the
overhanging boughs shrouded it all in obscurity ;
it was pre-eminently a place to be alone in.

Theron had driven to the depot with his guests
an hour before, and after a period of pleasant
waiting on the platform, had said good-bye to them
as the train moved away. Then he turned to
Alice, who had also accompanied them in the car-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

riage, and was conscious of a certain annoyance at
her having come. That long familiar talk of the
afternoon had given him the feeling that he was
entitled to bid farewell to Sister Soulsby : — to both
the Soulsbys — by himself.

" I am afraid folks will think it strange — neither
of us attending the prayer-meeting," he said, with
a suggestion of reproof in his tone, as they left the
station-yard.

" If we get back in time, I '11 run in for a min
ute," answered Alice, with docility.

"No — no," he broke in. "I'm not equal to
walking so fast. You rim on ahead, and explain
matters, and I will come along slowly."

"The hack we came in is still there in the
yard," the wife suggested. " We could drive home
in that. I don't believe it would cost more than
a quarter — and if you 're feeling badly — "

" But I am not feeling badly," Theron replied,
with frank impatience. " Only I feel — I feel
that being alone with my thoughts would be good
for me."

" Oh, certainly — by all means ! " Alice had
said, and turned sharply on her heel.

Being alone with these thoughts, Theron strolled
aimlessly about, and did not think at all. The
shadows gathered, and fireflies began to disclose
their tiny gleams among the shrubbery in the gar
dens. A lamp-lighter came along, and passed
him, leaving in his wake a straggling double line

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of lights, glowing radiantly against the black-green
of the trees. This recalled to Theron that he had
heard that the town council lit the street lamps
by the almanac, and economized gas when moon
shine was due. The idea struck him as droll, and
he dwelt upon it in various aspects, smiling at some
of its comic possibilities. Looking up in the mid
dle of one of these whimsical conceits, the sport
ive impulse died suddenly within him. He real
ized that it was dark, and that the massive black
bulk reared against the sky on the other side of
the road was the Catholic church. The other fact,
that he had been there walking to and fro for
some time, was borne in upon him more slowly.
He turned, and resumed the pacing up and down
with a still more leisurely step, musing upon the
curious way in which people's minds all uncon
sciously follow about where instincts and intuitions
lead.

No doubt it was what Sister Soulsby had said
about Catholics which had insensibly guided his
purposeless stroll in this direction. What a
woman that was ! Somehow the purport of her
talk — striking, and even astonishing as he had
found it — did not stand out so clearly in his
memory as did the image of the woman herself.
She must have been extremely pretty once. For
that matter she still was a most attractive-looking
woman. It had been a genuine pleasure to have
her in the house — to see her intelligent responsive
18 273

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

face at the table — to have it in one's power to
make drafts at will upon the fund of sympathy and
appreciation, of facile mirth and ready tenderness
in those big eyes of hers. He liked that phrase
she had used about herself, — "a good fellow."
It seemed to fit her to a " t." And Soulsby was
a good fellow too. All at once it occurred to him
to wonder whether they were married or not.

But really that was no affair of his, he reflected.
A citizen of the intellectual world should be above
soiling his thoughts with mean curiosities of that
sort, and he drove the impertinent query down
again under the surface of his mind. He refused
to tolerate, as well, sundry vagrant imaginings which
rose to cluster about and literalize the romance of
her youth which Sister Soulsby had so frankly out
lined. He would think upon nothing but her as
he knew her, — the kindly, quick-witted, capable
and charming woman who had made such a bril
liant break in the monotony of life at that dull
parsonage of his. The only genuine happiness in
life must consist in having bright, smart, attractive
women like that always about.

The lights were visible now in the upper rooms
of Father Forbes' pastorate across the way. Theron
paused for a second to consider whether he wanted
to go over and call on the priest. He decided that
mentally he was too fagged and flat for such an
undertaking. He needed another sort of com
panionship, — some restful, soothing human con-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

tact, which should exact nothing from him in
return, but just take charge of him, with soft?
wise words and pleasant plays of fancy, and jokes
and — and — something of the general effect cre
ated by Sister Soulsby's eyes. The thought ex
panded itself, and he saw that he had never
realized before, — nay, never dreamt before —
what a mighty part the comradeship of talented,
sweet-natured and beautiful women must play in
the development of genius, the achievement of
lofty aims, out in the great world of great men.
To know such women — ah, that would never
fall to his hapless lot.

The priest's lamps blinked at him through the
trees. He remembered that priests were sup
posed to be even further removed from the pos
sibilities of such contact than he was himself.
His memory reverted to that horribly ugly old
woman whom Father Forbes had spoken of as his
housekeeper. Life under the same roof with such
a hag must be even worse than — worse than —

The young minister did not finish the compari
son, even in the privacy of his inner soul. He
stood instead staring over at the pastorate, in a
kind of stupor of arrested thought. The figure
of a woman passed in view at the nearest win
dow — a tall figure with pale summer clothes of
some sort, and a broad summer hat, — a flitting
effect of diaphanous shadow between him and
the light which streamed from the casement.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Theron felt a little shiver run over him, as if the
delicate coolness of the changing night-air had got
into his blood. The window was open, and his
strained hearing thought it caught the sound of
faint laughter. He continued to gaze at the
place where the vision had appeared, the while a
novel and strange perception unfolded itself upon
his mind.

He had come there in the hope of encountering
Celia Madden.

Now that he looked this fact in the face, there
was nothing remarkable about it. In truth, it was
simplicity itself. He was still a sick man, weak in
body and dejected in spirits. The thought of how
unhappy and unstrung he was came to him now
with an insistent pathos that brought tears to his
eyes. He was only obeying the universal law of
nature, — the law which prompts the pallid spind
ling sprout of the potato in the cellar to strive
feebly toward the light.

From where he stood in the darkness he
stretched out his hands in the direction of that
open window. The gesture was his confession to
the overhanging boughs, to the soft night-breeze,
to the stars above, — and it bore back to him some
thing of the confessional's vague and wistful solace.
He seemed already to have drawn down into his
soul a taste of the refreshment it craved. He
sighed deeply, and the hot moisture smarted
again upon his eyelids, but this time not all in

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

grief. With his tender compassion for himself
there mingled now a flutter of buoyant prescience,
of exquisite expectancy.

Fate walked abroad this summer night. The
street door of the pastorate opened, and in the
flood of illumination which spread suddenly forth
over the steps and sidewalk, Theron saw again the
tall form, with the indefinitely light- hued flowing
garments and the wide straw hat. He heard a
tuneful woman's voice call out " Good-night,
Maggie," and caught no response save the abrupt
closing of the door, which turned everything black
again with a bang. He listened acutely for another
instant, and then with long, noiseless strides made
his way down his deserted side of the street. He
moderated his pace as he turned to cross the road
at the corner, and then, still masked by the trees,
halted altogether, in a momentary tumult of appre
hension. No — yes — it was all right. The girl
sauntered out from the total darkness into the
dim starlight of the open corner.

" Why, bless me, is that you, Miss Madden ? "

Celia seemed to discern readily enough, through
the accents of surprise, the identity of the tall,
slim man who addressed her from the shadows.

" Good-evening, Mr. Ware," she said, with
prompt affability. " I 'm so glad to find you out
again. We heard you were ill."

" I have been very ill," responded Theron, as
they shook hands and walked on together. He

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

added, with a quaver in his voice, " I am still far
from strong. I really ought not to be out at all.
But — but the longing for — for — well, I couldn't
stay in any longer. Even if it kills me, I shall be
glad I came out to-night."

" Oh, we won't talk of killing," said Celia. " I
don't believe in illnesses myself."

"But you believe in collapses of the nerves,"
put in Theron, with gentle sadness, " in moral and
spiritual and mental breakdowns. I remember how
I was touched by the way you told me you suffered
from them. I had to take what you said then for
granted. I had had no experience of it myself.
But now I know what it is." He drew a long,
pathetic sigh. "Oh, don't I know what it is ! "
he repeated gloomily.

" Come, my friend, cheer up," Celia purred at
him, in soothing tones. He felt that there was
a deliciously feminine and sisterly intuition in
her speech, and in the helpful, nurse-like way in
which she drew his arm through hers. He leaned
upon this support, and was glad of it in every
fibre of his being.

" Do you remember? You promised — that last
time I saw you — to play for me," he reminded
her. They were passing the little covered postern
door at the side and rear of the church as he spoke,
and he made a half halt to point the coincidence.

" Oh, there 's no one to blow the organ," she
said, divining his suggestion. " And I have n't

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the key — and, besides, the organ is too heavy
and severe for an invalid. It would overwhelm
you to-night."

"Not as you would know how to play it for me,"
urged Theron, pensively. " I feel as if good music
to-night would make me well again. I am really
very ill and weak — and unhappy ! "

The girl seemed moved by the despairing note
in his voice. She invited him by a sympathetic
gesture to lean even more directly on her arm.

" Come home with me, and I '11 play Chopin to
you," she said, in compassionate friendliness. "He
is the real medicine for bruised and wounded
nerves. You shall have as much of him as you
like."

The idea thus unexpectedly thrown forth spread
itself like some vast and inexpressibly alluring vista
before Theron's imagination. The spice of adven
ture in it fascinated his rnind as well, but for a
shrinking moment the flesh was weak.

"I'm afraid your people would — would think
it strange," he faltered — and began also to recall
that he had some people of his own who would be
even more amazed.

" Nonsense," said Celia, in fine, bold confidence,
and with a reassuring pressure on his arm. " I
allow none of my people to question what I do.
They never dream of such a preposterous thing.
Besides, you will see none of them. Mrs. Madden
is at the seaside, and my father and brother have

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

their own part of the house. I sha'n't listen for a
minute to your not coming. Come, I 'm your
doctor. I 'm to make you well again."

There was further conversation, and Theron
more or less knew that he was bearing a part in
it, but his whole mind seemed concentrated, in a
sort of delicious terror, upon the wonderful expe
rience to which every footstep brought him nearer.
His magnetized fancy pictured a great spacious
parlor, such as a mansion like the Maddens' would
of course contain, and there would be a grand
piano, and lace curtains, and paintings in gold
frames, and a chandelier, and velvet easy-chairs,
and he would sit in one of these, surrounded by
all the luxury of the rich, while Celia played to
him. There would be servants about, he pre
sumed, and very likely they would recognize him,
and of course they would talk about it to Tom,
Dick, and Harry afterward. But he said to him
self defiantly that he did n't care.

He withdrew his arm from hers as they came
upon the well-lighted main street. He passed no
one who seemed to know him. Presently they
came to the Madden place, and Celia, without
waiting for the gravelled walk, struck obliquely
across the lawn. Theron, who had been lagging
behind with a certain circumspection, stepped
briskly to her side now. Their progress over the
soft, close -cropped turf in the dark together, with
the scent of lilies and perfumed shrubs heavy on

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the night air, and the majestic bulk of the big
silent house rising among the trees before them,
gave him a thrilling sense of the glory of individual
freedom.

" I feel a new man already," he declared, as
they swung along on the grass. He breathed a
long sigh of content, and drew nearer, so that
their shoulders touched now and again as they
walked. In a minute more they were standing on
the doorstep, and Theron heard the significant
jingle of a bunch of keys which his companion
was groping for in her elusive pocket. He was
conscious of trembling a little at the sound.

It seemed that, unlike other people, the Mad
dens did not have their parlor on the ground-
floor, opening off the front hall. Theron stood
in the complete darkness of this hall, till Celia had
lit one of several candles which were in their hand-
sticks on a sort of sideboard next the hat-rack.
She beckoned him with a gesture of her head, and
he followed her up a broad staircase, magnificent
in its structural appointments of inlaid woods, and
carpeted with what to his feet felt like down.
The tiny light which his guide bore before her
half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall
lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor
and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer
wall. Over the stair-rail lay an open space of
such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal
lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle-

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flicker, that the young country minister could
think of no word but " palatial " to fit it all.

At the head of the flight, Celia led the way
along a wide corridor to where it ended. Here,
stretched from side to side, and suspended from
broad hoops of a copper-like metal, was a thick
curtain, of a uniform color which Theron at first
thought was green, and then decided must be blue.
She pushed its heavy folds aside, and unlocked
another door. He passed under the curtain be
hind her, and closed the door.

The room into which he had made his way was
not at all after the fashion of any parlor he had
ever seen. In the obscure light it was difficult to
tell what it resembled. He made out what he
took to be a painter's easel, standing forth inde
pendently in the centre of things. There were
rows of books on rude, low shelves. Against one
of the two windows was a big, flat writing-table —
or was it a drawing-table ? — littered with papers.
Under the other window was a carpenter's bench,
with a large mound of something at one end cov
ered with a white cloth. On a table behind the
easel rose a tall mechanical contrivance, the chief
feature of which was a thick upright spiral screw.
The floor was of bare wood stained brown. The
walls of this queer room had photographs and
pictures, taken apparently from illustrated papers,
pinned up at random for their only ornament.

Celia had lighted three or four other candles on

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the mantel. She caught the dumfounded expres
sion with which her guest was surveying his sur
roundings, and gave a merry little laugh.

" This is my workshop," she explained. " I
keep this for the things I do badly, — things I fool
with. If I want to paint, or model in clay, or
bind books, or write, or draw, or turn on the
lathe, or do some carpentering, here 's where I
do it. All the things that make a mess which
has to be cleaned up — they are kept out here —
because this is as far as the servants are allowed
to come."

She unlocked still another door as she spoke,
— a door which was also concealed behind a
curtain.

" Now," she said, holding up the candle so
that its reddish flare rounded with warmth the
creamy fulness of her chin and throat, and glowed
upon her hair in a flame of orange light — " now
I will show you what is my very own."

283

CHAPTER XIX

THERON WARE looked about him with frankly
undisguised astonishment.

The room in which he found himself was so
dark at first that it yielded little to the eye, and
that little seemed altogether beyond his compre
hension. His gaze helplessly followed Celia and
her candle about as she busied herself in the work
of illumination. When she had finished, and
pinched out the taper, there were seven lights in
the apartment — lights beaming softly through
half-opaque alternating rectangles of blue and
yellow glass. They must be set in some sort of
lanterns around against the wall, he thought, but
the shape of these he could hardly make out.

Gradually his sight adapted itself to this subdued
light, and he began to see other things. These
queer lamps were placed, apparently, so as to
shed a special radiance upon some statues which
stood in the corners of the chamber, and upon
some pictures which were embedded in the walls.
Theron noted that the statues, the marble of
which lost its aggressive whiteness under the
tinted lights, were mostly of naked men and

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

women; the pictures, four or five in number,
were all variations of a single theme, — the Virgin
Mary and the Child.

A less untutored vision than his would have
caught more swiftly the scheme of color and line
in which these works of art bore their share.
The walls of the room were in part of flat upright
wooden columns, terminating high above in simple
capitals, and they were all painted in pale amber
and straw and primrose hues, irregularly wavering
here and there toward suggestions of white. Be
tween these pilasters were broader panels of
stamped leather, in gently varying shades of
peacock blue. These contrasted colors vaguely
interwove and mingled in what he could see of
the shadowed ceiling far above. They were re
peated in the draperies and huge cushions and
pillows of the low, wide divan which ran about
three sides of the room. Even the floor, where
it revealed itself among the scattered rugs, was
laid in a mosaic pattern of matched woods, which,
like the rugs, gave back these same shifting blues
and uncertain yellows.

The fourth side of the apartment was broken in
outline at one end by the door through which
they had entered, and at the other by a broad,
square opening, hung with looped-back curtains
of a thin silken stuff. Between the two apertures
rose against the wall what Theron took at first
glance to be an altar. There were pyramidal rows

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of tall candles here on either side, each masked
with a little silken hood ; below, in the centre,
a shelf-like projection supported what seemed a
massive, carved casket, and in the beautiful intri
cacies of this, and the receding canopy of delicate
ornamentation which depended above it, the domi
nant color was white, deepening away in its
shadows, by tenderly minute gradations, to the
tints which ruled the rest of the room.

Celia lighted some of the high, thick tapers in
these candelabra, and opened the top of the
casket. Theron saw with surprise that she had
uncovered the keyboard of a piano. He viewed
with much greater amazement her next proceed
ing, — which was to put a cigarette between her
lips, and, bending over one of the candles with it
for an instant, turn to him with a filmy, opalescent
veil of smoke above her head.

" Make yourself comfortable anywhere," she said,
with a gesture which comprehended all the divans
and pillows in the place. " Will you smoke? "

" I have never tried since I was a little boy,"
said Theron, " but I think I could. If you don't
mind, I should like to see."

Lounging at his ease on the oriental couch,
Theron experimented cautiously upon the unac
customed tobacco, and looked at Celia with what
he felt to be the confident quiet of a man of the
world. She had thrown aside her hat, and in do
ing so had half released some of the heavy strands

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of hair coiled at the back of her head. His glance
instinctively rested upon this wonderful hair of
hers. There was no mistaking the sudden fasci
nation its disorder had for his eye.

She stood before him with the cigarette poised
daintily between thumb and finger of a shapely
hand, and smiled comprehendingly down on her
guest.

" I suffered the horrors of the damned with this
hair of mine when I was a child," she said. " I
daresay all children have a taste for persecuting
red-heads ; but it 's a specialty with Irish chil
dren. They get hold somehow of an ancient
national superstition, or legend, that red hair was
brought into Ireland by the Danes. It 's been a
term of reproach with us since Brian Boru's time
to call a child a Dane. I used to be pursued and
baited with it every day of my life, until the one
dream of my ambition was to get old enough to
be a Sister of Charity, so that I might hide my
hair under one of their big beastly white linen
caps. I Ve got rather away from that ideal since,
I 'm afraid," she added, with a droll downward
curl of her lip.

"Your hair is very beautiful," said Theron, in
the calm tone of a connoisseur.

" I like it myself," Celia admitted, and blew a
little smoke-ring toward him. " I Ve made this
whole room to match it. The colors, I mean,"
she explained, in deference to his uplifted brows.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Between us, we make up what Whistler would
call a symphony. That reminds me — I was going
to play for you. Let me finish the cigarette first."

Theron felt grateful for her reticence about the
fact that he had laid his own aside. " I have
never seen a room at all like this," he remarked.
" You are right ; it does fit you perfectly."

She nodded her sense of his appreciation. " It
is what I like," she said. "It expresses me. I
will not have anything about me — or anybody
either — that I don't like. I suppose if an old
Greek could see it, it would make him sick, but
it represents what / mean by being a Greek. It
is as near as an Irishman can get to it."

" I remember your puzzling me by saying that
you were a Greek."

Celia laughed, and tossed the cigarette-end
away. " I 'd puzzle you more, I 'm afraid, if I
tried to explain to you what I really meant by it.
I divide people up into two classes, you know, —
Greeks and Jews. Once you get hold of that
principle, all other divisions and classifications,
such as by race or language or nationality, seem
pure foolishness. It is the only true division there
is. It is just as true among negroes or wild In
dians who never heard of Greece or Jerusalem,
as it is among white folks. That is the beauty
of it. It works everywhere, always."

"Try it on me," urged Theron, with a twinkling
eye. " Which am I ? "

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"Both," said the girl, with a merry nod of the
head. " But now I '11 play. I told you you were
to hear Chopin. I prescribe him for you. He is
the Greekiest of the Greeks. There was a nation
where all the people were artists, where everybody
was an intellectual aristocrat, where the Philistine
was as unknown, as extinct, as the dodo. Chopin
might have written his music for them."

" I am interested in Shopang," put in Theron,
suddenly recalling Sister Soulsby's confidences as
to the source of her tunes. " He lived with — •
what 's his name — George something. We were
speaking about him only this afternoon.'*

Celia looked down into her visitor's face at first
inquiringly, then with a latent grin about her lips.
" Yes — George something," she said, in a tone
which mystified him.

The Rev. Mr. Ware was sitting up, a minute
afterward, in a ferment of awakened consciousness
that he had never heard the piano played before.
After a little, he noiselessly rearranged the cushions,
and settled himself again in a recumbent posture.
It was beyond his strength to follow that first im
pulse, and keep his mind abreast with what his
ears took in. He sighed and lay back, and sur
rendered his senses to the mere unthinking charm
of it all.

It was the Fourth Prelude that was singing in
the air about him, — a simple, plaintive strain
wandering at will over a surface of steady rhythmic
19 289

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

movement underneath, always creeping upward
through mysteries of sweetness, always sinking
again in cadences of semi-tones. With only a
moment's pause, there came the Seventh Waltz,
— a rich, bold confusion which yet was not con
fused. Theron's ears dwelt with eager delight
upon the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds,
but it left his thoughts free.

From where he reclined, he turned his head to
scrutinize, one by one, the statues in the corners.
No doubt they were beautiful, — for this was a de
partment in which he was all humility, — and one
of them, the figure of a broad-browed, stately,
though thick- waisted woman, bending slightly for
ward and with both arms broken off, was decently
robed from the hips downward. The others were
not robed at all. Theron stared at them with the
erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and
felt that he possessed a new and disturbing con
ception of what female emancipation meant in
these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance
rested again upon the largest of the Virgin pic
tures, — a full-length figure in sweeping draperies,
its radiant, aureoled head upturned in rapt adora
tion, its feet resting on a crescent moon which
shone forth in bluish silver through festooned
clouds of cherubs. The incongruity between the
unashamed statues and this serene incarnation of
holy womanhood jarred upon him for the instant.
Then his mind went to the piano.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Without a break the waltz had slowed and ex
panded into a passage of what might be church
music, an exquisitely modulated and gently solemn
chant, through which a soft, lingering song roved
capriciously, forcing the listener to wonder where
it was coming out, even while it caressed and
soothed to repose.

He looked from the Madonna to Celia. Be
yond the carelessly drooping braids and coils of
hair which blazed between the candles, he could
see the outline of her brow and cheek, the noble
contour of her lifted chin and full, modelled throat,
all pink as the most delicate roseleaf is pink, against
the cool lights of the altar- like wall. The sight
convicted him in the court of his own soul as a
prurient and mean-minded rustic. In the pres
ence of such a face, of such music, there ceased
to be any such thing as nudity, and statues no
more needed clothes than did those slow, deep,
magnificent chords which came now, gravely accu
mulating their spell upon him.

" It is all singing ! " the player called out to
him over her shoulder, in a minute of rest. " That
is what Chopin does, — he sings ! "

She began, with an effect of thinking of some
thing else, the Sixth Nocturne, and Theron at first
thought she was not playing anything in particular,
so deliberately, haltingly, did the chain of charm
unwind itself into sequence. Then it came closer
to him than the others had done. The dreamy,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

wistful, meditative beauty of it all at once op
pressed and inspired him. He saw Celia's shoul
ders sway under the impulse of the rubato license,
— the privilege to invest each measure with the
stress of the whole, to loiter, to weep, to run and
laugh at will, — and the music she made spoke to
him as with a human voice. There was the woo
ing sense of roses and moonlight, of perfumes,
white skins, alluring languorous eyes, and then —

"You know this part, of course," he heard her
say.

On the instant they had stepped from the dark,
scented, starlit garden, where the nightingale sang,
into a great cathedral. A sombre and lofty an
them arose, and filled the place with the splendor
of such dignified pomp of harmony and such sug
gestions of measureless choral power and authority
that Theron sat abruptly up, then was drawn re-
sistlessly to his feet. He stood motionless in the
strange room, feeling most of all that one should
kneel to hear such music.

" This you '11 know too, — the funeral march
from the Second Sonata," she was saying, before
he realized that the end of the other had come.
He sank upon the divan again, bending forward
and clasping his hands tight around his knees.
His heart beat furiously as he listened to the
weird, mediaeval processional, with its wild, clash
ing chords held down in the bondage of an orderly
sadness. There was a propelling motion in the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

thing — a sense of being borne bodily along —
which affected him like dizziness. He breathed
hard through the robust portions of stern, vigorous
noise, and rocked himself to and fro when, as rosy
morn breaks upon a storm-swept night, the drums
are silenced for the sweet, comforting strain of sol
itary melody. The clanging minor harmonies into
which the march relapses came to their abrupt
end. Theron rose once more, and moved with a
hesitating step to the piano.

" I want to rest a little," he said, with his hand
on her shoulder.

" Whew ! so do I," exclaimed Celia, letting her
hands fall with an exaggerated gesture of weariness.
" The sonatas take it out of one ! They are hide
ously difficult, you know. They are rarely played."

" I did n't know," remarked Theron. She
seemed not to mind his hand upon her shoulder,
and he kept it there. " I did n't know anything
about music at all. What I do know now is that
— that this evening is an event in my life."

She looked up at him and smiled. He read
unsuspected tendernesses and tolerances of friend
ship in the depths of her eyes, which emboldened
him to stir the fingers of that audacious hand in a
lingering, caressing trill upon her shoulder. ' The
movement was of the faintest, but having ventured
it, he drew his hand abruptly away.

" You are getting on," she said to him. There
was an enigmatic twinkle in the smile with which

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

she continued to regard him. " We are Helleniz-
ing you at a great rate."

A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She
shifted her eyes toward vacancy with a swift, ab
stracted glance, reflected for a moment, then let a
sparkling half-wink and the dimpling beginnings
of an almost roguish smile mark her assent to the
conceit, whatever it might be.

"I will be with you in a moment," he heard
her say ; and while the words were still in his
ears she had risen and passed out of sight through
the broad, open doorway to the right. The looped
curtains fell together behind her. Presently a
mellow light spread over their delicately trans
lucent surface, — a creamy, undulating radiance
which gave the effect of moving about among the
myriad folds of the silk.

Theron gazed at these curtains for a little, then
straightened his shoulders with a gesture of de
cision, and, turning on his heel, went over and ex
amined the statues in the further corners minutely.

" If you would like some more, I will play you
the Berceuse now."

Her voice came to him with a delicious shock.
He wheeled round and beheld her standing at the
piano, with one hand resting, palm upward, on the
keys. She was facing him. Her tall form was
robed now in some shapeless, clinging drapery,
lustrous and creamy and exquisitely soft, like the
curtains. The wonderful hair hung free and luxu-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

riant about her neck and shoulders, and glowed
with an intensity of fiery color which made all the
other hues of the room pale and vague. A fillet of
faint, sky-like blue drew a gracious span through
the flame of red above her temples, and from this
there rose the gleam of jewels. Her head inclined
gently, gravely, toward him, — with the posture of
that armless woman in marble he had been study
ing, — and her brown eyes, regarding him from the
shadows, emitted light.

" It is a lullaby, — the only one he wrote," she
said, as Theron, pale-faced and with tightened lips,
approached her. " No — you must n't stand there,"
she added, sinking into the seat before the instru
ment ; " go back and sit where you were."

The most perfect of lullabies, with its swaying
abandonment to cooing rhythm, ever and again
rising in ripples to the point of insisting on some
thing, one knows not what, and then rocking,
melting away once more, passed, so to speak, over
Theron's head. He leaned back upon the cush
ions, and watched the white, rounded forearm
which the falling folds of this strange, statue-like
drapery made bare.

There was more that appealed to his mood in
the Third Ballade. It seemed to him that there
were words going along with it, — incoherent and
impulsive yet very earnest words, appealing to him
in strenuous argument and persuasion. Each time
he almost knew what they said, and strained after

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

their meaning with a passionate desire, and then
there would come a kind of cuckoo call, and every
thing would swing dancing off again into a mock
ery of inconsequence.

Upon the silence there fell the pure, liquid,
mellifluous melody of a soft-throated woman sing
ing to her lover.

" It is like Heine, — simply a love-poem," said
the girl, over her shoulder.

Theron followed now with all his senses, as she
carried the Ninth Nocturne onward. The stormy
passage, which she banged finely forth, was in
truth a lover's quarrel ; and then the mild, placid
flow of sweet harmonies into which the furore sank,
dying languorously away upon a silence all alive
with tender memories of sound, — was that not
also a part of love ?

They sat motionless through a minute, — the
man on the divan, the girl at the piano, — and
Theron listened for what he felt must be the audi
ble thumping of his heart.

Then, throwing back her head, with upturned
face, Celia began what she had withheld for the
last, — the Sixteenth Mazurka. This strange for
eign thing she played with her eyes closed, her
head tilted obliquely so that Theron could see the
rose-tinted, beautiful countenance, framed as if
asleep in the billowing luxuriance of unloosed au
burn hair. He fancied her beholding visions as she
wrought the music, — visions full of barbaric color

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and romantic forms. As his mind swam along
with the gliding, tricksy phantom of a tune, it
seemed as if he too could see these visions, — as
if he gazed at them through her eyes.

It could not be helped. He lifted himself noise
lessly to his feet, and stole with caution toward
her. He would hear the rest of this weird, volup
tuous fantasy standing thus, so close behind her
that he could look down upon her full, uplifted
face, — so close that, if she moved, that glowing
nimbus of hair would touch him.

There had been some curious and awkward
pauses in this last piece, which Theron, by some
side cerebration, had put down to her not watch
ing what her fingers did. There came another of
these pauses now, — an odd, unaccountable halt in
what seemed the middle of everything. He stared
intently down upon her statuesque, dreaming face
during the hush, and caught his breath as he
waited. There fell at last a few faltering ascend
ing notes, making a half-finished strain, and then
again there was silence.

Celia opened her eyes, and poured a direct, deep
gaze into the face above hers. Its pale lips were
parted in suspense, and the color had faded from
its cheeks.

" That is the end," she said, and, with a turn of
her lithe body, stood swiftly up, even while the
echoes of the broken melody seemed panting in
the air about her for completion.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Theron put his hands to his face, and pressed
them tightly against eyes and brow for an instant.
Then, throwing them aside with an expansive
downward sweep of the arms, and holding them
clenched, he returned Celia's glance. It was as
if he had never looked into a woman's eyes
before.

"It carit be the end!" he heard himself say
ing, in a low voice charged with deep significance.
He held her gaze in the grasp of his with impla
cable tenacity. There was a trouble about breath
ing, and the mosaic floor seemed to stir under his
feet. He clung defiantly to the one idea of not
releasing her eyes.

" How could it be the end ? " he demanded,
lifting an uncertain hand to his breast as he spoke,
and spreading it there as if to control the tumultu
ous fluttering of his heart. "Things don't end
that way ! "

A sharp, blinding spasm of giddiness closed
upon and shook him. while the brave words were
on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as
it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan
and sat down, gasping a little, and patting his
hand on his heart. There was fright written all
over his whitened face.

«We — we forgot that I am a sick man," he
said feebly, answering Celia's look of surprised
inquiry with a forced, wan smile. " I was afraid
my heart had gone wrong."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

She scrutinized him for a further moment, with
growing reassurance in her air. Then, piling up
the pillows and cushions behind him for support,
for all the world like a big sister again, she stepped
into the inner room, and returned with a flagon of
quaint shape and a tiny glass. She poured this
latter full to the brim of a thick yellowish, aromatic
liquid, and gave it him to drink.

" This Benedictine is all I happen to have," she
said. " Swallow it down. It will do you good."

Theron obeyed her. It brought tears to his
eyes ; but, upon reflection, it was grateful and
warming. He did feel better almost immediately.
A great wave of comfort seemed to enfold him as
he settled himself back on the divan. For that
one flashing instant he had thought that he was
dying. He drew a long grateful breath of relief,
and smiled his content.

Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away.
She sat with her head against the wall, and one
foot curled under her, and almost faced him.

" I dare say we forced the pace a little," she
remarked, after a pause, looking down at the floor,
with the puckers of a ruminating amusement play
ing in the corners of her mouth. " It does n't do
for a man to get to be a Greek all of a sudden.
He must work along up to it gradually."

He remembered the music. " Oh, if I only
knew how to tell you," he murmured ecstatically,
" what a revelation your playing has been to me !

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

1 had never imagined anything like it. I shall
think of it to my dying day."

He began to remember as well the spirit that
was in the air when the music ended. The details
of what he had felt and said rose vaguely in his
mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia's
white-robed figure to the broad, open doorway
beyond. The curtains behind which she had
disappeared were again parted and fastened back.
A dim light was burning within, out of sight, and
its faint illumination disclosed a room filled with
white marbles, white silks, white draperies of vary
ing sorts, which shaped themselves, as he looked,
into the canopy and trappings of an extravagantly
over- sized and sumptuous bed. He looked away
again.

" I wish you would tell me what you really
mean by that Greek idea of yours," he said with
the abruptness of confusion.

Celia did not display much enthusiasm in the
tone of her answer. "Oh," she said almost indif
ferently, " lots of things. Absolute freedom from
moral bugbears, for one thing. The recognition
that beauty is the only thing in life that is worth
while. The courage to kick out of one's life every
thing that is n't worth while ; and so on."

" But," said Theron, watching the mingled
delicacy and power of the bared arm and the
shapely grace of the hand which she had lifted to
her face, " I am going to get you to teach it all to

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

me." The memories began crowding in upon him
now, and the baffling note upon which the mazurka
had stopped short chimed like a tuning-fork in his
ears. " I want to be a Greek myself, if you 're
one. I want to get as close to you — to your
ideal, that is, as I can. You open up to me a
whole world that I had not even dreamed existed.
We swore our friendship long ago, you know :
and now, after to-night — you and the music have
decided me. I am going to put the things out of
my life that are not worth while. Only you must
help me ; you must tell me how to begin."

He looked up as he spoke, to enforce the almost
tender entreaty of his words. The spectacle of
a yawn, only fractionally concealed behind those
talented fingers, chilled his soft speech, and sent a
flush over his face. He rose on the instant.

Celia was nothing abashed at his discovery.
She laughed gayly in confession of her fault, and
held her hand out to let him help her disentangle
her foot from her draperies, and get off the divan.
It seemed to be her meaning that he should
continue holding her hand after she was also
standing.

"You forgive me, don't you?" she urged
smilingly. " Chopin always first excites me, then
sends me to sleep. You see how you sleep
to-night ! "

The brown, velvety eyes rested upon him, from
under their heavy lids, with a languorous kindli-

301

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ness. Her warm, large palm clasped his in frank
liking.

"I don't want to sleep at all," Mr. Ware was
impelled to say. " I want to lie awake and think
about — about everything all over again."

She smiled drowsily. " And you 're sure you
feel strong enough to walk home?"

"Yes," he replied, with a lingering dilatory
note, which deepened upon reflection into a sigh.
" Oh, yes."

He followed her and her candle down the
magnificent stairway again. She blew the light
out in the hall, and, opening the front door, stood
with him for a silent moment on the threshold.
Then they shook hands once more, and with a
whispered good-night, parted.

Celia, returning to the blue and yellow room,
lighted a cigarette and helped herself to some
Benedictine in the glass which Theron had used.
She looked meditatively at this little glass for a
moment, turning it about in her fingers with a
smile. The smile warmed itself suddenly into
a joyous laugh. She tossed the glass aside, and,
holding out her flowing skirts with both hands,
executed a swinging pirouette in front of the
gravely beautiful statue of the armless woman.

302

CHAPTER XX

IT was apparent to the Rev. Theron Ware, from
the very first moment of waking next morning,
that both he and the world had changed over night.
The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he
had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished.
He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and
looked about him, with perceptions of quite an
altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a
fresh existence. He lacked even the impulse to
turn round and inspect the cocoon from which he
had emerged. Let the past bury the past. He
had no vestige of interest in it.

The change was not premature. He found
himself not in the least confused by it, or
frightened. Before he had finished shaving, he
knew himself to be easily and comfortably at
home in his new state, and master of all its
requirements.

It seemed as if Alice, too, recognized that he
had become another man, when he went down
and took his chair at the breakfast table. They
had exchanged no words since their parting in
the depot-yard the previous evening, — an event

303

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

now faded off into remote vagueness in Theron's
mind. He smiled brilliantly in answer to the fur
tive, half-sullen, half-curious glance she stole at
him, as she brought the dishes in.

"Ah ! potatoes warmed up in cream ! " he said,
with hearty pleasure in his tone. " What a mind-
reader you are, to be sure ! "

" I 'm glad you 're feeling so much better," she
said briefly, taking her seat.

" Better? " he returned. " I 'm a new being ! "

She ventured to look him over more freely, upon
this assurance. He perceived and catalogued, one
by one, the emotions which the small brain was ex
pressing through those shallow blue eyes of hers.
She was turning over this, that, and the other hostile
thought and childish grievance, — most of all she
was dallying with the idea of asking him where he
had been till after midnight. He smiled affably
in the face of this scattering fire of peevish
glances, and did not dream of resenting any
phase of them all.

" I am going down to Thurston's this morning,
and order that piano sent up to-day," he announced
presently, in a casual way.

"Why, Theron, can we afford it? "the wife
asked, regarding him with surprise.

" Oh, easily enough," he replied light-heartedly.
"You know they've increased my salary."

She shook her head. " No, I did n't. How
should I? You don't realize it," she went on,

3°4

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

dolefully, " but you 're getting so you don't tell
me the least thing about your affairs nowadays."

Theron laughed aloud. "You ought to be
grateful, — such melancholy affairs as mine have
been till now," he declared, — " that is, if it were n't
absurd to think such a thing." Then, more soberly,
he explained : " No, my girl, it is you who don't
realize. lam carrying big projects in my mind, —
big, ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great
things depend. They no doubt make me seem
preoccupied and absent-minded ; but it is a wife's
part to understand, and make allowances, and not
intrude trifles which may throw everything out of
gear. Don't think I 'm scolding, my girl. I only
speak to reassure you and — and help you to com
prehend. Of course I know that you wouldn't
willingly embarrass my — my career."

" Of course not," responded Alice, dubiously;
"but — but — "

"But what?" Theron felt compelled by civility
to say, though on the instant he reproached him
self for the weakness of it.

"Well — I hardly know how to say it," she fal
tered, " but it was nicer in the old days, before you
bothered your head about big projects, and your
career, as you call it, and were just a good, earnest,
simple young servant of the Lord. Oh, Theron ! "
she broke forth suddenly, with tearful zeal, " I
get sometimes lately almost scared lest you should
turn out to be a — a backslider!"
20 3°5

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The husband sat upright, and hardened his
countenance. But yesterday the word would have
had in it all sorts of inherited terrors for him.
This morning's dawn of a new existence revealed
it as merely an empty and stupid epithet.

"These are things not to be said," he admon
ished her, after a moment's pause, and speaking
with carefully measured austerity. " Least of all
are they to be said to a clergyman — by his
wife."

It was on the tip of Alice's tongue to retort,
" Better by his wife than by outsiders ! " but
she bit her lips, and kept the gibe back. A
rebuke of this form and gravity was a novelty in
their relations. The fear that it had been merited
troubled, even while it did not convince, her mind,
and the puzzled apprehension was to be read plainly
enough on her face.

Theron, noting it, saw a good deal more behind.
Really, it was amazing how much wiser he had
grown all at once. He had been married for years,
and it was only this morning that he suddenly dis
covered how a wife ought to be handled. He con
tinued to look sternly away into space for a little.
Then his brows relaxed slowly and under the visi
ble influence of melting considerations. He nodded
his head, turned toward her abruptly, and broke
the silence with labored amiability.

" Come, come — the day began so pleasantly — •
it was so good to feel well again — let us talk about

306

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the piano instead. That is," he added, with an
obvious overture to playfulness, " if the thought
of having a piano is not too distasteful to you."

Alice yielded almost effusively to his altered
mood. They went together into the sitting-room,
to measure and decide between the two available
spaces which were at their disposal, and he insisted
with resolute magnanimity on her settling this ques
tion entirely by herself. When at last he mentioned
the fact that it was Friday, and he would look over
some sermon memoranda before he went out, Alice
retired to the kitchen in openly cheerful spirits.

Theron spread some old manuscript sermons
before him on his desk, and took down his scrib-
bling-book as well. But there his application
flagged, and he surrendered himself instead, chin
on hand, to staring out at the rhododendron in
the yard. He recalled how he had seen Soulsby
patiently studying this identical bush. The notion
of Soulsby, not knowing at all how to sing, yet dili
gently learning those sixths, brought a smile to his
mind ; and then he seemed to hear Celia calling
out over her shoulder, " That 's what Chopin does,
— he sings ! " The spirit of that wonderful music
came back to him, enfolded him in its wings. It
seemed to raise itself up, — a palpable barrier be
tween him and all that he had known and felt
and done before. That was his new birth, — that
marvellous night with the piano. The conceit
pleased him, — not the less because there flashed

3°7

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

along with it the thought that it was a poet that
had been born. Yes ; the former country lout,
the narrow zealot, the untutored slave groping
about in the dark after silly superstitions, cring
ing at the scowl of mean Pierces and Winches,
was dead. There was an end of him, and good
riddance. In his place there had been born a
Poet, — he spelled the word out now unabashed,
— a child of light, a lover of beauty and sweet
sounds, a recognizable brother to Renan and
Chopin — and Celia !

Out of the soothing, tenderly grateful revery, a
practical suggestion suddenly took shape. He
acted upon it without a moment's delay, getting
out his letter-pad, and writing hurriedly, —

" DEAR Miss MADDEN, — Life will be more toler
able to me if before nightfall I can know that
there is a piano under my roof. Even if it
remains dumb, it will be some comfort to have
it here and look at it, and imagine how a great
master might make it speak.

" Would it be too much to beg you to look in
at Thurston's, say at eleven this forenoon, and give
me the inestimable benefit of your judgment in
selecting an instrument?

" Do not trouble to answer this, for I am leav
ing home now, but shall call at Thurston's at
eleven, and wait.

" Thanking you in anticipation,

" I am — "

308

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Here Theron's fluency came to a sharp halt.
There were adverbs enough and to spare on the
point of his pen, but the right one was not easy to
come at. " Gratefully," " faithfully," " sincerely,"
" truly," — each in turn struck a false note. He
felt himself not quite any of these things. At last
he decided to write just the simple word " yours,"
and then wavered between satisfaction at his
boldness, dread lest he had been over-bold, and,
worst of the lot, fear that she would not notice it
one way or the other, — all the while he sealed
and addressed the letter, put it carefully in an
inner pocket, and got his hat.

There was a moment's hesitation as to notifying
the kitchen of his departure. The interests of
domestic discipline seemed to point the other
way. He walked softly through the hall, and let
himself out by the front door without a sound.

Down by the canal bridge he picked out an idle
boy to his mind, — a lad whose aspect appeared to
promise intelligence as a messenger, combined with
large impartiality in sectarian matters. He was to
have ten cents on his return ; and he might report
himself to his patron at the bookstore yonder.

Theron was grateful to the old bookseller for
remaining at his desk in the rear. There was a
tacit compliment in the suggestion that he was not
a mere customer, demanding instant attention.
Besides, there was no keeping " Thurston's " out
of conversations in this place.

309

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Loitering along the shelves, the young minister's
eye suddenly found itself arrested by a name on a
cover. There were a dozen narrow volumes in
uniform binding, huddled together under a card
board label of " Eminent Women Series." Oddly
enough, one of these bore the title " George
Sand." Theron saw there must be some mistake,
as he took the book down, and opened it. His
glance hit by accident upon the name of Chopin.
Then he read attentively until almost the stroke
of eleven.

" We have to make ourselves acquainted with
all sorts of queer phases of life," he explained in
self-defence to the old bookseller, then counting
out the money for the book from his lean purse.
He smiled as he added, " There seems something
almost wrong about taking advantage of the clergy
man's discount for a life of George Sand."

" I don't know," answered the other, pleasantly.
" Guess she was n't so much different from the
rest of 'em, — except that she did n't mind ap
pearances. We know about her. We don't know
about the others."

" I must hurry," said Theron, turning on his
heel. The haste with which he strode out of the
store, crossed the street, and made his way toward
Thurston's, did not prevent his thinking much upon
the astonishing things he had encountered in this
book. Their relation to Celia forced itself more and
more upon his mind. He could recall the twinkle

310

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

in her eye, the sub-mockery in her tone, as she
commented with that half-contemptuous " Yes —
George something ! " upon his blundering igno
rance. His mortification at having thus exposed
his dull rusticity was swallowed up in conjectures
as to just what her tolerant familiarity with such
things involved. He had never before met a
young unmarried woman who would have con
fessed to him any such knowledge. But then, of
course, he had never known a girl who resembled
Celia in any other way. He recognized vaguely
that he must provide himself with an entire new
set of standards by which to measure and com
prehend her. But it was for the moment more
interesting to wonder what her standards were.
Did she object to George Sand's behavior? Or
did she sympathize with that sort of thing? Did
those statues, and the loose- flowing diaphanous
toga and unbound hair, the cigarettes, the fiery
liqueur, the deliberately sensuous music, — was he
to believe that they signified — ?

" Good- morning, Mr. Ware. You have managed
by a miracle to hit on one of my punctual days,"
said Celia.

She was standing on the doorstep, at the
entrance to the musical department of Thurston's.
He had not noticed before the fact that the sun
was shining. The full glare of its strong light,
enveloping her figure as she stood, and drawing
the dazzled eye for relief to the bower of softened

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

color, close beneath her parasol of creamy silk and
lace, was what struck him now first of all. It was
as if Celia had brought the sun with her.

Theron shook hands with her, and found joy in
the perception that his own hand trembled. He
put boldly into words the thought that came to him.

" It was generous of you," he said, " to wait
for me out here, where all might delight in the
sight of you, instead of squandering the privi
lege on a handful of clerks inside."

Miss Madden beamed upon him, and nodded
approval.

" Alcibiades never turned a prettier compli
ment," she remarked. They went in together at
this, and Theron made a note of the name.

During the ensuing half- hour, the young min
ister followed about even more humbly than the
clerks in Celia's commanding wake. There were
a good many pianos in the big show-room over
head, and Theron found himself almost awed by
their size and brilliancy of polish, and the thought
of the tremendous sum of money they represented
altogether. Not so with the organist. She ordered
them rolled around this way or that, as if they had
been so many checkers on a draught-board. She
threw back their covers with the scant ceremony
of a dispensary dentist opening paupers' mouths.
She exploited their several capacities with master
ful hands, not deigning to seat herself, but just
slightly bending forward, and sweeping her fingers

312

THE DAMNATION OF TH-ERON WARE

up and down their keyboards, — able, domineer
ing fingers which pounded, tinkled, meditated,
assented, condemned, all in a flash, and amid
what affected the layman's ears as a hopelessly
discordant hubbub.

Theron moved about in the group, nursing her
parasol in his arms, and watching her. The exag
gerated deference which the clerks and salesmen
showed to her as the rich Miss Madden, seemed to
him to be mixed with a certain assertion of the
claims of good-fellowship on the score of her being
a musician. There undoubtedly was a sense of
freemasonry between them. They alluded con
tinually in technical terms to matters of which he
knew nothing, and were amused at remarks of hers
which to him carried no meaning whatever. It
was evident that the young men liked her, and
that their liking pleased her. It thrilled him to
think that she knew he liked her, too, and to
recall what abundant proofs she had given that
here, also, she had pleasure in the fact. He clung
insistently to the memory of these evidences.
They helped him to resist a disagreeable tendency
to feel himself an intruder, an outsider, among
these pianoforte experts.

When it was all over, Celia waved the others
aside, and talked with Theron. " I suppose you
want me to tell you the truth," she said. " There 's
nothing here really good. It is always much
better to buy of the makers direct."

3*3

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"Do they sell on the instalment plan?" he
asked. There was a wistful effect in his voice
which caught her attention.

She looked away — out through the window on
the street below — for a moment. Then her eyes
returned to his, and regarded him with a comfort
ing, friendly, half- motherly glance, recalling for
all the world the way Sister Soulsby had looked at
him at odd times.

" Oh, you want it at once — I see," she re
marked softly. "Well, this Adelberger is the
best value for the money."

Mr. Ware followed her finger, and beheld with
dismay that it pointed toward the largest instru
ment in the room, — a veritable leviathan among
pianos. The price of this had been mentioned as
$600. He turned over the fact that this was two-
thirds his yearly salary, and found the courage to
shake his head.

" It would be too large — much too large — for
the room," he explained. "And, besides, it is
mere than I like to pay — or can pay, for that
matter." It was pitiful to be explaining such
details, but there was no help for it.

They picked out a smaller one, which Celia said
was at least of fair quality. " Now leave all the
bargaining to me," she adjured him. "These
prices that they talk about in the piano trade are
all in the air. There are tremendous discounts, if
one knows how to insist upon them. All you have

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to do is to tell them to send it to your house — •
you wanted it to-day, you said ? "

"Yes — in memory of yesterday," he mur
mured.

She herself gave the directions, and Thurston's
people, now all salesmen again, bowed grateful
acquiescence. Then she sailed regally across the
room and down the stairs, drawing Theron in her
train. The hirelings made salaams to him as
well ; it would have been impossible to interpose
anything so trivial and squalid as talk about terms
and dates of payment.

" I am ever so much obliged to you," he said
fervently, in the comparative solitude of the lower
floor. She had paused to look at something in the
book-department.

" Of course I was entirely at your service ; don't
mention it," she replied, reaching forth her hand
in an absent way for her parasol.

He held up instead the volume he had pur
chased. " Guess what that is ! You never would
guess in this wide world ! " His manner was sur
charged with a sense of the surreptitious.

" Well, then, there 's no good trying, is there ? "
commented Celia, her glance roving again toward
the shelves.

" It is a life of George Sand," whispered Theron.
" I Ve been reading it this morning — all the
Chopin part — while I was waiting for you."

To his surprise, there was an apparently dis-

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

pleased contraction of her brows as he made this
revelation. For the instant, a dreadful fear of
having offended her seized upon and sickened him.
But then her face cleared, as by magic. She
smiled, and let her eyes twinkle in laughter at him,
and lifted a forefinger in the most winning mock
ery of admonition.

" Naughty ! naughty ! " she murmured back,
with a roguishly solemn wink.

He had no response ready for this, but mutely
handed her the parasol. The situation had sud
denly grown too confused for words, or even se
quent thoughts. Uppermost across the hurly-burly
of his mind there scudded the singular reflection
that he should never hear her play on that new
piano of his. Even as it flashed by out of sight,
he recognized it for one of the griefs of his life ;
and the darkness which followed seemed nothing
but a revolt against the idea of having a piano at
all. He would countermand the order. He would
— but she was speaking again.

They had strolled toward the door, and her
voice was as placidly conventional as if the talk
had never strayed from the subject of pianos.
Theron with an effort pulled himself together, and
laid hold of her words.

" I suppose you will be going the other way,"
she was saying. " I shall have to be at the church
all day. We have just got a new Mass over from
Vienna, and I 'm head over heels in work at it. I

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

can have Father Forbes to myself to-day, too.
That bear of a doctor has got the rheumatism, and
can't come out of his cave, thank Heaven ! "

And then she was receding from view, up the
sunlit, busy sidewalk, and Theron, standing on the
doorstep, ruefully rubbed his chin. She had said
he was going the other way, and, after a little pause,
he made her words good, though each step he took
seemed all in despite of his personal inclinations.
Some of the passers-by bowed to him, and one or
two paused as if to shake hands and exchange
greetings. He nodded responses mechanically,
but did not stop. It was as if he feared to inter
rupt the process of lifting his reluctant feet and
propelling them forward, lest they should wheel
and scuttle off in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER XXI

DELIBERATE as his progress was, the diminishing
number of store-fronts along the sidewalk, and the
increasing proportion of picket-fences enclosing
domestic lawns, forced upon Theron's attention
the fact that he was nearing home. It was a trifle
past the hour for his midday meal. He was not
in the least hungry ; still less did he feel any
desire just now to sit about in that library living-
room of his. Why should he go home at all?
There was no reason whatever — save that Alice
would be expecting him. Upon reflection, that
hardly amounted to a reason. Wives, with their
limited grasp of the realities of life, were always
expecting their husbands to do things which it
turned out not to be feasible for them to do. The
customary male animal spent a considerable part
of his life in explaining to his mate why it had
been necessary to disappoint or upset her little
plans for his comings and goings. It was in the
very nature of things that it should be so.

Sustained by these considerations, Mr. Ware
slackened his steps, then halted irresolutely, and
after a minute's hesitation, entered the small tern-

31*

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

perance restaurant before which, as by intuition,
he had paused. The elderly woman who placed
on the tiny table before him the tea and rolls he
ordered, was entirely unknown to him, he felt sure,
yet none the less she smiled at him, and spoke
almost familiarly, —

" I suppose Mrs. Ware is at the seaside, and
you are keeping bachelor's hall?"

" Not quite that," he responded stiffly, and hur
ried through the meagre and distasteful repast, to
avoid any further conversation.

There was an idea underlying her remark, how
ever, which recurred to him when he had paid his
ten cents and got out on the street again. There
was something interesting in the thought of Alice
at the seaside. Neither of them had ever laid eyes
on salt water, but Theron took for granted the
most extravagant landsman's conception of its cur
ative and invigorating powers. It was apparent to
him that he was going to pay much greater atten
tion to Alice's happiness and well-being in the
future than he had latterly done. He had bought
her, this very day, a superb new piano. He was
going to simply insist on her having a hired girl.
And this seaside notion, — why, that was best of
all.

His fancy built up pleasant visions of her feast
ing her delighted eyes upon the marvel of a great
ocean storm, or roaming along a beach strewn with
wonderful marine shells, exhibiting an innocent joy

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

in their beauty. The fresh sea-breeze blew through
her hair, as he saw her in mind's eye, and brought
the hardy flush of health back upon her rather
pallid cheeks. He was prepared already hardly to
know her, so robust and revivified would she have
become, by the time he went down to the depot
to meet her on her return.

For his imagination stopped short of seeing
himself at the seaside. It sketched instead pic
tures of whole weeks of solitary academic calm,
alone with his books and his thoughts. The facts
that he had no books, and that nobody dreamed of
interfering with his thoughts, subordinated them
selves humbly to his mood. The prospect, as he
mused fondly upon it, expanded to embrace the
priest's and the doctor's libraries ; the thoughts
which he longed to be alone with involved close
communion with their thoughts. It could not but
prove a season of immense mental stimulation and
ethical broadening. It would have its lofty poetic
and artistic side as well ; the languorous melodies
of Chopin stole over his revery, as he dwelt upon
these things, and soft azure and golden lights
modelled forth the exquisite outlines of tall marble
forms.

He opened the gate leading to Dr. Ledsmar's
house. His walk had brought him quite out of
the town, and up, by a broad main highway which
yet took on all sorts of sylvan charms, to a com
manding site on the hillside. Below, in the valley,

320

lay Octavius, at one end half-hidden in factory
smoke, at the other, where narrow bands of water
gleamed upon the surface of a broad plain piled
symmetrically with lumber, presenting an oddly
incongruous suggestion of forest odors and the
simplicity of the wilderness. In the middle dis
tance, on gradually rising ground, stretched a wide
belt of dense, artificial foliage, peeping through
which tiled turrets and ornamented chimneys
marked the polite residences of those who, though
they neither stoked the furnace fires to the west,
nor sawed the lumber on the east, lived in purple
and fine linen from the profits of this toil. Nearer
at hand, pastures with grazing cows on the one
side of the road, and the high, weather-stained
board fence of the race-course on the other, com
pleted the jumble of primitive rusticity and urban
complications characterizing the whole picture.

Dr. Ledsmar's house, toward which Theron's
impulses had been secretly leading him ever since
Celia's parting remark about the rheumatism,
was of that spacious and satisfying order of old-
fashioned houses which men of leisure and means
built for themselves while the early traditions of
a sparse and contented homogeneous population
were still strong in the Republic. There was a hos
pitable look about its wide veranda, its broad, low
bulk, and its big, double front door, which did not
fit at all with the sketch of a man-hating recluse
that the doctor had drawn of himself.

21 321

Theron had prepared his mind for the effect of
being admitted by a Chinaman, and was taken
somewhat aback when the door was opened by
the doctor himself. His reception was pleasant
enough, almost cordial, but the sense of awkward
ness followed him into his host's inner room and
rested heavily upon his opening speech.

" I heard, quite by accident, that you were ill,"
he said, laying aside his hat.

" It 's nothing at all," replied Ledsmar. " Merely
a stiff shoulder that I wear from time to time in
memory of my father. It ought to be quite gone
by nightfall. It was good of you to come, all the
same. Sit down if you can find a chair. As usual,
we are littered up to our eyes here. That 's it, —
throw those things on the floor."

Mr. Ware carefully deposited an armful of
pamphlets on the rug at his feet, and sat down.
Litter was indeed the word for what he saw about
him. Bookcases, chairs, tables, the corners of
the floor, were all buried deep under disorderly
strata of papers, diagrams, and opened books.
One could hardly walk about without treading on
them. The dust which danced up into the bar
of sunshine streaming in from the window, as the
doctor stepped across to another chair, gave Theron
new ideas about the value of Chinese servants.

"I must thank you, first of all, doctor," he
began, " for your kindness in coming when 1 was
ill. •' I was sick, and ye visited me.' '

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" You must n't think of it that way," said Leds-
mar ; " your friend came for me, and of course I
went ; and gladly too. There was nothing that
I could do, or that anybody could do. Very
interesting man, that friend of yours. And his
wife, too, — both quite out of the common. I
don't know when I Ve seen two such really genu
ine people. I should like to have known more of
them. Are they still here? "

"They went yesterday," Theron replied. His
earlier shyness had worn off, and he felt comfort
ably at his ease. " I don't know," he went on,
" that the word e genuine ' is just what would have
occurred to me to describe the Soulsbys. They
are very interesting people, as you say, — most in
teresting, — and there was a time, I dare say, when
I should have believed in their sincerity. But of
course I saw them and their performance from the
inside, — like one on the stage of a theatre, you
know, instead of in the audience, and — well, I
understand things better than I used to."

The doctor looked over his spectacles at him
with a suggestion of inquiry in his glance, and
Theron continued : " I had several long talks with
her ; she told me very frankly the whole story of
her life — and — and it was decidedly queer, I can
assure you ! I may say to you — you will under
stand what I mean — that since my talk with you,
and the books you lent me, I see many things dif
ferently. Indeed, when I think upon it sometimes

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my old state of mind seems quite incredible to
me. I can use no word for my new state short of
illumination."

Dr. Ledsmar continued to regard his guest with
that calm, interrogatory scrutiny of his. He did
not seem disposed to take up the great issue of
illumination. "I suppose," he said after a little,
" no woman can come in contact with a priest for
any length of time without telling him the ' story
of her life,' as you call it. They all do it. The
thing amounts to a law."

The young minister's veins responded with a
pleasurable thrill to the use of the word " priest "
in obvious allusion to himself. " Perhaps in fair
ness I ought to explain," he said, " that in her
case it was only done in the course of a long talk
about myself. I might say that it was by way of
kindly warning to me. She saw how I had be
come unsettled in many — many of my former
views — and she was nervous lest this should lead
me to — to — "

"To throw up the priesthood," the doctor in
terposed upon his hesitation. " Yes, I know the
tribe. Why, my dear sir, your entire profession
would have perished from the memory of man
kind, if it had n't been for women. It is a very
curious subject. Lots of thinkers have dipped
into it, but no one has gone resolutely in with a
search-light and exploited the whole thing. Our
boys, for instance, traverse in their younger years

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

all the stages of the childhood of the race. They
have terrifying dreams of awful monsters and giant
animals of which they have never so much as heard
in their waking hours ; they pass through the lust
for digging caves, building fires, sleeping out in
the woods, hunting with bows and arrows, — all
remote ancestral impulses ; they play games with
stones, marbles, and so on at regular stated periods
of the year which they instinctively know, just as
they were played in the Bronze Age, and heaven
only knows how much earlier. But the boy goes
through all this, and leaves it behind him, — so
completely that the grown man feels himself more
a stranger among boys of his own place who are
thinking and doing precisely the things he thought
and did a few years before, than he would among
Kurds or Esquimaux. But the woman is totally
different. She is infinitely more precocious as a
girl. At an age when her slow brother is still
stubbing along somewhere in the neolithic period,
she has flown way ahead to a kind of mediaeval
stage, or dawn of mediaevalism, which is peculiarly
her own. Having got there, she stays there; she
dies there. The boy passes her, as the tortoise
did the hare. He goes on, if he is a philosopher,
and lets her remain in the dark ages, where she
belongs. If he happens to be a fool, which is
customary, he stops and hangs around in her
vicinity."

Theron smiled. " We priests," he said, and

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paused again to enjoy the words, — "I suppose I
oughtn't to inquire too closely just where we
belong in the procession."

" We are considering the question imperson
ally," said the doctor. " First of all, what you
regard as religion is especially calculated to attract
women. They remain as superstitious to-day,
down in the marrow of their bones, as they were
ten thousand years ago. Even the cleverest of
them are secretly afraid of omens, and respect
auguries. Think of the broadest women you
know. One of them will throw salt over her
shoulder if she spills it. Another drinks money
from her cup by skimming the bubbles in a spoon.
Another forecasts her future by the arrangement
of tea-grounds. They make the constituency to
which an institution based on mysteries, miracles,
and the supernatural generally, would naturally
appeal. Secondly, there is the personality of the
priest."

" Yes," assented Ware. There rose up before
him, on the instant, the graceful, portly figure and
strong, comely face of Father Forbes.

" Women are not a metaphysical people. They
do not easily follow abstractions. They want their
dogmas and religious sentiments embodied in a
man, just as they do their romantic fancies. Of
course you Protestants, with your married clergy,
see less of the effects of this than celibates do, but
even with you there is a great deal in it. Why, the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

very institution of celibacy itself was forced upon
the early Christian Church by the scandal of rich
Roman ladies loading bishops and handsome
priests with fabulous gifts, until the passion for
currying favor with women of wealth, and marry
ing them or wheedling their fortunes from them,
debauched the whole priesthood. You should
read your Jerome."

" I will, — certainly," said the listener, resolving
to remember the name and refer it to the old
bookseller.

" Well, whatever laws one sect or another makes,
the woman's attitude toward the priest survives.
She desires to see him surrounded by flower-pots
and candles, to have him smelling of musk. She
would like to curl his hair, and weave garlands in
it. Although she is not learned enough to have
ever heard of such things, she intuitively feels in his
presence a sort of backwash of the old pagan sen
suality and lascivious mysticism which enveloped
the priesthood in Greek and Roman days. Ugh !
It makes one sick ! "

Dr. Ledsmar rose, as he spoke, and dismissed
the topic with a dry little laugh. " Come, let me
show you round a bit," he said. " My shoulder is
easier walking than sitting."

"Have you never written a book yourself?"
asked Theron, getting to his feet.

" I have a thing on serpent-worship," the scien
tist replied, — " written years ago."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"I can't tell you how I should enjoy reading
it," urged the other.

The doctor laughed again. (f You '11 have to
learn German, then, I 'm afraid. It is still in cir
culation in Germany, I believe, on its merits as a
serious book. I have n't a copy of the edition in
English. That was all exhausted by collectors
who bought it for its supposed obscenity, like
Burton's i Arabian Nights.' Come this way, and I
will show you my laboratory."

They moved out of the room, and through a
passage, Ledsmar talking as he led the way. " I
took up that subject, when I was at college, by a
curious chance. I kept a young monkey in my
rooms, which had been born in captivity. I
brought home from a beer hall — it was in Ger
many — some pretzels one night, and tossed one
toward the monkey. He jumped toward it, then
screamed and ran back shuddering with fright. I
could n't understand it at first. Then I saw that
the curled pretzel, lying there on the floor, was
very like a little coiled-up snake. The monkey
had never seen a snake, but it was in his blood
to be afraid of one. That incident changed my
whole life for me. Up to that evening, I had
intended to be a lawyer."

Theron did not feel sure that he had understood
the point of the anecdote. He looked now, with
out much interest, at some dark little tanks con
taining thick water, a row of small glass cases with

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

adders and other lesser reptiles inside, and a gen
eral collection of boxes, jars, and similar receptacles
connected with the doctor's pursuits. Further on
was a smaller chamber, with a big empty furnace,
and shelves bearing bottles and apparatus like a
drug- store.

It was pleasanter in the conservatory, — a low,
spacious structure with broad pathways between the
plants, and an awning over the sunny side of the
roof. The plants were mostly orchids, he learned.
He had read of them, but never seen any be
fore. No doubt they were curious; but he dis
covered nothing to justify the great fuss made
about them. The heat grew oppressive inside, and
he was glad to emerge into the garden. He
paused under the grateful shade of a vine-clad
trellis, took off his hat, and looked about
him with a sigh of relief. Everything seemed
old-fashioned and natural and delightfully free
from pretence in the big, overgrown field of flowers
and shrubs.

Theron recalled with some surprise Celia's
indictment of the doctor as a man with no poetry
in his soul. " You must be extremely fond
of flowers," he remarked.

Dr. Ledsmar shrugged his well shoulder. " They
have their points," he said briefly. "These are
all dioecious here. Over beyond are monoecious
species. My work is to test the probabilities for
or against Darwin's theory that hermaphroditism

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

in plants is a late by-product of these earlier
forms."

"And is his theory right?" asked Mr. Ware,
with a polite show of interest.

" We may know in the course of three or four
hundred years," replied Ledsmar. He looked up
into his guest's face with a quizzical half- smile.
" That is a very brief period for observation when
such a complicated question as sex is involved," he
added. "We have been studying the female of
our own species for some hundreds of thousands
of years, and we have n't arrived at the most
elementary rules governing her actions."

They had moved along to a bed of tall plants,
the more forward of which were beginning to show
bloom. " Here another task will begin next
month," the doctor observed. "These are salvias,
pentstemons, and antirrhinums, or snapdragons,
planted very thick for the purpose. Humble-bees
bore holes through their base, to save the labor of
climbing in and out of the flowers, and we don't
quite know yet why some hive-bees discover and
utilize these holes at once, while others never do.
It may be merely the old-fogy conservatism of
the individual, or there may be a law in it."

These seemed very paltry things for a man of
such wisdom to bother his head about. Theron
looked, as he was bidden, at the rows of hives
shining in the hot sun on a bench along the wall,
but offered no comment beyond a casual, " My

330

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

mother was always going to keep bees, but some
how she never got around to it. They say it pays
very well, though."

"The discovery of the reason why no bee will
touch the nectar of the Epipactis latifolia, though
it is sweet to our taste, and wasps are greedy for it,
would 'pay," commented the doctor. "Not like a
blue rhododendron, in mere money, but in recog
nition. Lots of men have achieved a half-column
in the ' Encyclopedia Britannica ' on a smaller basis
than that."

They stood now at the end of the garden,
before a small, dilapidated summer-house. On the
bench inside, facing him, Theron saw a strange
recumbent figure stretched at full length, appar
ently sound asleep, or it might be dead. Looking
closer, with a startled surprise, he made out the
shaven skull and outlandish garb of a Chinaman.
He turned toward his guide in the expectation of
a scene.

The doctor had already taken out a note -book
and pencil, and was drawing his watch from
his pocket. He stepped into the summer-house,
and, lifting the Oriental's limp arm, took account
of his pulse. Then, with head bowed low, side-
wise, he listened for the heart-action. Finally,
he somewhat brusquely pushed back one of the
Chinaman's eyelids, and made a minute inspection
of what the operation disclosed. Returning to the
light, he inscribed some notes in his book, put it

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

back in his pocket, and came out. In answer to
Theron's marvelling stare, he pointed toward a
pipe of odd construction lying on the floor beneath
the sleeper.

"This is one of my regular afternoon duties,"
he explained, again with the whimsical half-smile.
" I am increasing his dose monthly by regular
stages, and the results promise to be rather remark
able. Heretofore, observations have been made
mostly on diseased or morbidly deteriorated sub
jects. This fellow of mine is strong as an ox,
perfectly nourished, and watched over intelligently.
He can assimilate opium enough to kill you and
me and every other vertebrate creature on the
premises, without turning a hair, and he has n't
got even fairly under way yet."

The thing was unpleasant, and the young min
ister turned away. They walked together up the
path toward the house. His mind was full now of
the hostile things which Celia had said about the
doctor. He had vaguely sympathized with her
then, upon no special knowledge of his own. Now
he felt that his sentiments were vehemently in
accord with hers. The doctor was a beast.

And yet — as they moved slowly along through
the garden the thought took sudden shape in his
mind — it would be only justice for him to get also
the doctor's opinion of Celia. Even while they
offended and repelled him, he could not close his
eyes to the fact that the doctor's experiments and

332

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

occupations were those of a patient and exact man
of science, — a philosopher. And what he had
said about women, — there was certainly a great
deal of acumen and shrewd observation in that.
If he would only say what he really thought about
Celia, and about her relations with the priest !
Yes, Theron recognized now there was nothing
else that he so much needed light upon as those
puzzling ties between Celia and Father Forbes.

He paused, with a simulated curiosity, about
one of the flower-beds. "Speaking of women
and religion," — he began, in as casual a tone as
he could command, — "I notice curiously enough
in my own case, that as I develop in what you
may call the — the other direction, my wife, who
formerly was not especially devoted, is being
strongly attracted by the most unthinking and
hysterical side of — of our church system."

The doctor looked at him, nodded, and stooped
to nip some buds from a stalk in the bed.

"And another case," Theron went on — "of
course it was all so new and strange to me — but
the position which Miss Madden seems to occupy
about the Catholic Church here — I suppose you
had her in mind when you spoke."

Ledsmar stood up. "My mind has better
things to busy itself with than mad asses of that
description," he replied. "She is not worth talk
ing about, — a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance,
and red-headed lewdness. If she were even a

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

type, she might be worth considering ; but she is
simply an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled
by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large
impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that
she has money. Her father is a decent man. He
ought to have her whipped."

Mr. Ware drew himself erect, as he listened to
these outrageous words. It would be unmanly, he
felt, to allow such comments upon an absent friend
to pass unrebuked. Yet there was the courtesy
due to a host to be considered. His mind,
fluttering between these two extremes, alighted
abruptly upon a compromise. He would speak so
as to show his disapproval, yet not so as to prevent
his finding out what he wanted to know. The
desire to hear Ledsmar talk about Celia and the
priest seemed now to have possessed him for a
long time, to have dictated his unpremeditated
visit out here, to have been growing in intensity
all the while he pretended to be interested in
orchids and bees and the drugged Chinaman.
It tugged passionately at his self-control as he
spoke.

" I cannot in the least assent to your characteri
zation of the lady," he began with rhetorical
dignity.

" Bless me ! " interposed the doctor, with decep
tive cheerfulness, " that is not required of you at all.
It is a strictly personal opinion, offered merely as a
contribution to the general sum of hypotheses."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"But," Theron went on, feeling his way, "of
course, I gathered that evening that you had
prejudices in the matter ; but these are rather
apart from the point I had in view. We were
speaking, you will remember, of the traditional
attitude of women toward priests, — wanting to
curl their hair and put flowers in it, you know, —
and that suggested to me some individual illustra
tions, and it occurred to me to wonder just what
were the relations between Miss Madden and —
and Father Forbes. She said this morning, for
instance, — I happened to meet her, quite by
accident, — that she was going to the church to
practise a new piece, and that she could have
Father Forbes to herself all day. Now that would
be quite an impossible remark in our — that is,
in any Protestant circles — and purely as a matter
of comparison, I was curious to ask you just how
much there was in it. I ask you, because going
there so much you have had exceptional oppor
tunities for — "

A sharp exclamation from his companion inter
rupted the clergyman's hesitating monologue. It
began like a high-pitched, violent word, but
dwindled suddenly into a groan of pain. The
doctor's face, too, which had on the flash of
Theron's turning seemed given over to unmixed
anger, took on an expression of bodily suffering
instead.

" My shoulder has grown all at once excessively

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

painful," he said hastily. " I 'm afraid I must ask
you to excuse me, Mr. Ware."

Carrying the afflicted side with ostentatious
caution, he led the way without ado round the
house to the front gate on the road. He had put
his left hand under his coat to press it against his
aching shoulder, and his right hung palpably help
less. This rendered it impossible for him to shake
hands with his guest in parting.

" You 're sure there 's nothing I can do," said
Theron, lingering on the outer side of the gate.
" I used to rub my father's shoulders and back ;
I 'd gladly — "

"Oh, not for worlds!" groaned the doctor.
His anguish was so impressive that Theron, as he
walked down the road, quite missed the fact that
there had been no invitation to come again.

Dr. Ledsmar stood for a minute or two, his
gaze meditatively following the retreating figure.
Then he went in, opening the front door with his
right hand, and carrying himself once more as if
there were no such thing as rheumatism in the
world. He wandered on through the hall into
the laboratory, and stopped in front of the row of
little tanks full of water.

Some deliberation was involved in whatever his
purpose might be, for he looked from one tank to
another with a pondering, dilatory gaze. At last
he plunged his hand into the opaque fluid and
drew forth a long, slim, yellowish-green lizard, with

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

a coiling, sinuous tail and a pointed, evil head.
The reptile squirmed and doubled itself backward
around his wrist, darting out and in with dizzy
swiftness its tiny forked tongue.

The doctor held the thing up to the light, and,
scrutinizing it through his spectacles, nodded his
head in sedate approval. A grim smile curled in
his beard.

" Yes, you are the type," he murmured to it,
with evident enjoyment in the conceit. " Your
name is n't Johnny any more. It 's the Rev.
Theron Ware."

*» 337

CHAPTER XXII

THE annual camp- meeting of the combined
Methodist districts of Octavius and Thessaly was
held this year in the second half of September,
a little later than usual. Of the nine days devoted
to this curious survival of primitive Wesleyanism,
the fifth fell upon a Saturday. On the noon of
that day the Rev. Theron Ware escaped for some
hours from the burden of work and incessant
observation which he shared with twenty other
preachers, and walked alone in the woods.

The scene upon which he turned his back was
one worth looking at. A spacious, irregularly
defined clearing in the forest lay level as a tennis-
court, under the soft haze of autumn sunlight. In
the centre was a large, roughly constructed frame
building, untouched by paint, but stained and
weather-beaten with time. Behind it were some
lines of horse-sheds, and still further on in that
direction, where the trees began, the eye caught
fragmentary glimpses of low roofs and the fronts of
tiny cottages, withdrawn from full view among the
saplings and underbrush. At the other side of the
clearing, fully fourscore tents were pitched, some

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

gray and mended, others dazzlingly white in their
newness. The more remote of these tents fell
into an orderly arrangement of semi-circular form,
facing that part of the engirdling woods where the
trees were largest, and their canopy of overhanging
foliage was lifted highest from the ground. Inside
this half-ring of tents were many rounded rows of
benches, which followed in narrowing lines the
idea of an amphitheatre cut in two. In the centre,
just under the edge of the roof of boughs, rose a
wooden pagoda, in form not unlike an open-air
stand for musicians. In front of this, and leading
from it on the level of its floor, there projected a
platform, railed round with aggressively rustic
woodwork. The nearest benches came close
about this platform.

At the hour when Theron started away, there
were few enough signs of life about this encamp
ment. The four or five hundred people who were
in constant residence were eating their dinners
in the big boarding-house, or the cottages or the
tents. It was not the time of day for strangers.
Even when services were in progress by daylight,
the regular attendants did not make much of a
show, huddled in a gray-black mass at the front
of the auditorium, by comparison with the great
green and blue expanses of nature about them.

The real spectacle was in the evening, when,
as the shadows gathered, big clusters of kerosene
torches, hung high on the trees facing the audience,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

were lighted. The falling darkness magnified the
glow of the lights, and the size and importance of
what they illumined. The preacher, bending for
ward over the rails of the platform, and fastening
his eyes upon the abashed faces of those on the
"anxious seat" beneath him, borrowed an effect
of druidical mystery from the wall of blackness
about him, from the flickering reflections on the
branches far above, from the cool night air which
stirred across the clearing. The change was in
the blood of those who saw and heard him, too.
The decorum and half-heartedness of their devo
tions by day deepened under the glare of the
torches into a fervent enthusiasm, even before
the services began. And if there was in the rustic
pulpit a man whose prayers or exhortations could
stir their pulses, they sang and groaned and
bellowed out their praises with an almost barbar
ous license, such as befitted the wilderness.

But in the evening not all were worshippers.
For a dozen miles round on the country-side,
young farm- workers and their girls regarded the
camp-meeting as perhaps the chief event of the
year, — no more to be missed than the country
fair or the circus, and offering, from many points
of view, more opportunities for genuine enjoyment
than either. Their behavior when they came was
pretty bad, — not the less so because all the rules
established by the Presiding Elders for the regu
lation of strangers took it for granted that they

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

would act as viciously as they knew how. These
sight-seers sometimes ventured to occupy the back
benches, where the light was dim. More often
they stood outside, in the circular space between
the tents and the benches, and mingled cat-calls,
drovers' yelps, and all sorts of mocking cries and
noises with the " Amens " of the earnest congre
gation. Their rough horse-play on the fringe of the
sanctified gathering was grievous enough ; every
body knew that much worse things went on
further out in the surrounding darkness. Indeed,
popular report gave to these external phases of the
camp -meeting an even more evil fame than attached
to the later moonlight husking-bees, or the least
reputable of the midwinter dances at Dave Ran
dall's low halfway house.

Cynics said that the Methodists found conso
lation for this scandal in the large income they de
rived from their unruly visitors' gate-money. This
was unfair. No doubt the money played its part,
but there was something else far more important.
The pious dwellers in the camp, intent upon reviv
ing in their poor modern way the character and
environment of the heroic early days, felt the need
of just this hostile and scoffing mob about them to
bring out the spirit they sought. Theirs was pre
eminently a fighting religion, which languished in
peaceful fair weather, but flamed high in the
storm. The throng of loafers and light-minded
worldlings of both sexes, with their jeering inter-

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ruptions and lewd levity of conduct, brought upon
the scene a kind of visible personal devil, with
whom the chosen could do battle face to face.
The daylight services became more and more per
functory, as the sojourn in the woods ran its course,
and interest concentrated itself upon the night
meetings, for the reason that then came the fierce
wrestle with a Beelzebub of flesh and blood. And
it was not so one-sided a contest, either !

No evening passed without its victories for the
pulpit. Careless or mischievous young people
who were pushed into the foremost ranks of the
mockers, and stood grinning and grimacing under
the lights, would of a sudden feel a spell clamped
upon them. They would hear a strange, quaver
ing note in the preacher's voice, catch the sense of
a piercing, soul-commanding gleam in his eye. —
not at all to be resisted. These occult forces
would take control of them, drag them forward as
in a dream to the benches under the pulpit, and
abase them there like worms in the dust. And
then the preacher would descend, and the elders
advance, and the torch-fires would sway and dip
before the wind of the mighty roar that went up in
triumph from the brethren.

These combats with Satan at close quarters, if
they made the week-day evenings exciting, reacted
with an effect of crushing dulness upon the Sun
day services. The rule was to admit no strangers
to the grounds from Saturday night to Monday

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

morning. Every year attempts were made to
rescind or modify this rule, and this season at
least three-fourths of the laymen in attendance
had signed a petition in favor of opening the gates.
The two Presiding Elders, supported by a dozen
of the older preachers, resisted the change, and
they had the backing of the more bigoted section
of the congregation from Octavius. The con
troversy reached a point where Theron's Presiding
Elder threatened to quit the grounds, and the
leaders of the open- Sunday movement spoke
freely of the ridiculous figure which its cranks and
fanatics made poor Methodism cut in the eyes of
modern go-ahead American civilization. Then
Theron Ware saw his opportunity, and preached
an impromptu sermon upon the sanctity of the
Sabbath, which ended all discussion. Sometimes
its arguments seemed to be on one side, some
times on the other, but always they were clothed
with so serene a beauty of imagery, and moved in
such a lofty and rarefied atmosphere of spiritual
exaltation, that it was impossible to link them to so
sordid a thing as this question of gate-money.
When he had finished, nobody wanted the gates
opened. The two factions found that the differ
ence between them had melted out of existence.
They sat entranced by the charm of the sermon ;
then, glancing around at the empty benches,
glaringly numerous in the afternoon sunlight, they
whispered regrets that ten thousand people had

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

not been there to hear that marvellous discourse.
Theron's conquest was of exceptional dimensions.
The majority, whose project he had defeated, were
strangers who appreciated and admired his effort
most. The little minority of his own flock, though
less susceptible to the influence of graceful diction
and delicately balanced rhetoric, were proud of the
distinction he had reflected upon them, and de
lighted with him for having won their fight. The
Presiding Elders wrung his hand with a significant
grip. The extremists of his own charge beamed
friendship upon him for the first time. He was
the veritable hero of the week.

The prestige of this achievement made it the
easier for Theron to get away by himself next day,
and walk in the woods. A man of such power had
a right to solitude. Those who noted his de
parture from the camp remembered with pleasure
that he was to preach again on the morrow. He
was going to commune with God in the depths oi
the forest, that the Message next day might be
clearer and more luminous still.

Theron strolled for a little, with an air of aim-
lessness, until he was well outside the more or less
frequented neighborhood of the camp. Then he
looked at the sun and the lay of the land with that
informing scrutiny of which the farm-bred boy
never loses the trick, turned, and strode at a rat
tling pace down the hillside. He knew nothing
personally of this piece of woodland, — a spur of

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the great Adirondack wilderness thrust southward
into the region of homesteads and dairies and hop-
fields, — but he had prepared himself by a study of
the map, and he knew where he wanted to go.
Very soon he hit upon the path he had counted
upon finding, and at this he quickened his gait.

Three months of the new life had wrought
changes in Theron. He bore himself more erectly,
for one thing ; his shoulders were thrown back,
and seemed thicker. The alteration was even
more obvious in his face. The effect of lank,
wistful, sallow juvenility had vanished. It was the
countenance of a mature, well-fed, and confident
man, firmer and more rounded in its outlines, and
with a glow of health on its whole surface. Under
the chin were the suggestions of fulness which be
speak an easy mind. His clothes were new ; the
frock-coat fitted him, and the thin, dark-colored
autumn overcoat, with its silk lining exposed at the
breast, gave a masculine bulk and shape to his
figure. He wore a shining tall hat, and, in haste
though he was, took pains not to knock it against
low-hanging branches.

All had gone well — more than well — with him.
The second Quarterly Conference had passed with
out a ripple. Both the attendance and the collec
tions at his church were larger than ever before,
and the tone of the congregation toward him was
altered distinctly for the better. As for himself, he
viewed with astonished delight the progress he had

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

made in his own estimation. He had taken Sister
Soulsby's advice, and the results were already won
derful. He had put aside, once and for all, the
thousand foolish trifles and childish perplexities
which formerly had racked his brain, and worried
him out of sleep and strength. He borrowed all
sorts of books boldly now from the Octavius public
library, and could swim with a calm mastery and
enjoyment upon the deep waters into which Draper
and Lecky and Laing and the rest had hurled him.
He dallied pleasurably, a little languorously, with a
dozen aspects of the case against revealed religion,
ranging from the mild heterodoxy of Andover's
qualms to the rude IngersolPs rollicking negation of
God himself, as a woman of coquetry might play
with as many would-be lovers. They amused him ;
they were all before him to choose ; and he was
free to postpone indefinitely the act of selection.
There was a sense of the luxurious in this position
which softened bodily as well as mental fibres.
He ceased to grow indignant at things below or
outside his standards, and he bought a small book
which treated of the care of the hand and finger
nails.

Alice had accepted with deference his explana
tion that shapely hands played so important a
part in pulpit oratory. For that matter, she now
accepted whatever he said or did with admirable
docility. It was months since he could remember
her venturing upon a critical attitude toward him.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

She had not wished to leave home, for the seaside
or any other resojt, during the summer, but had
worked outside in her garden more than usual.
This was inexpensive, and it seemed to do her as
much good as a holiday could have done. Her
new devotional zeal was now quite an old thing ;
it had not slackened at all from the revival pitch.
At the outset she had tried several times to talk
with her husband upon this subject. He had
discouraged conversation about her soul and its
welfare, at first obliquely, then, under compulsion,
with some directness. His thoughts were ab
sorbed, he said, by the contemplation of vast,
abstract schemes of creation and the government
of the universe, and it only diverted and embar
rassed his mind to try to fasten it upon the details
of personal salvation. Thereafter the topic was
not broached between them.

She bestowed a good deal of attention, too,
upon her piano. The knack of a girlish nimble-
ness of touch had returned to her after a few
weeks, and she made music which Theron sup
posed was very good, — for her. It pleased him,
at all events, when he sat and listened to it ; but
he had a far greater pleasure, as he listened, in
dwelling upon the memories of the yellow and blue
room which the sounds always brought up. Al
though three months had passed, Thurston's had
never asked for the first payment on the piano, or
even sent in a bill. This impressed him as being

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

peculiarly graceful behavior on his part, and he
recognized its delicacy by not going near Thurs-
ton's at all.

An hour's sharp walk, occasionally broken by
short cuts across open pastures, but for the most
part on forest paths, brought Theron to the brow
of a small knoll, free from underbrush, and covered
sparsely with beech-trees. The ground was soft
with moss and the powdered remains of last year's
foliage ; the leaves above him were showing the
first yellow stains of autumn. A sweet smell of
ripening nuts was thick upon the air, and busy
rustlings and chirpings through the stillness told
how the chipmunks and squirrels were attending
to their harvest.

Theron had no ears for these noises of the
woodland. He had halted, and was searching
through the little vistas offered between the stout
gray trunks of the beeches for some sign of a more
sophisticated sort. Yes ! there were certainly
voices to be heard, down in the hollow. And
now, beyond all possibility of mistake, there came
up to him the low, rhythmic throb of music.
It was the merest faint murmur of music, made up
almost wholly of groaning bass notes, but it was
enough. He moved down the slope, swiftly at
first, then with increasing caution. The sounds
grew louder as he advanced, until he could hear
the harmony of the other strings in its place
beside the uproar of the big fiddles, and distin-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

guish from both the measured noise of many feet
moving as one.

He reached a place from which, himself unob
served, he could overlook much of what he had
come to see.

The bottom of the glade below him lay out in
the full sunshine, as flat and as velvety in its fresh
greenness as a garden lawn. Its open expanse
was big enough to accommodate several distinct
crowds, and here the crowds were, — one massed
about an enclosure in which young men were play
ing at football, another gathered further off in a
horse-shoe curve at the end of a baseball diamond,
and a third thronging at a point where the shade
of overhanging woods began, focussed upon a cen
tre of interest which Theron could not make out.
Closer at hand, where a shallow stream rippled
along over its black-slate bed, some little boys,
with legs bared to the thighs, were paddling about,
under the charge of two men clad in long black
gowns. There were others of these frocked moni
tors scattered here and there upon the scene, —
pallid, close-shaven, monkish figures, who none
the less wore modern hats, and superintended with
knowledge the games of the period. Theron re
membered that these were the Christian Brothers,
the semi-monastic teachers of the Catholic school.

And this was the picnic of the Catholics of
Octavius. He gazed in mingled amazement and
exhilaration upon the spectacle. There seemed to

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

be literally thousands of people on the open fields
before him, and apparently there were still other
thousands in the fringes of the woods round about.
The noises which arose from this multitude — the
shouts of the lads in the water, the playful squeals
of the girls in the swings, the fused uproar of the
more distant crowds, and above all the diligent,
ordered strains of the dance-music proceeding
from some invisible distance in the greenwood —
charmed his ears with their suggestion of universal
merriment. He drew a long breath — half pleas
ure, half wistful regret — as he remembered that
other gathering in the forest which he had left
behind.

At any rate, it should be well behind him to-day,
whatever the morrow might bring ! Evidently he
was on the wrong side of the circle for the head
quarters of the festivities. He turned and walked
to the right through the beeches, making a de"tour,
under cover, of the crowds at play. At last he
rounded the long oval of the clearing, and found
himself at the very edge of that largest throng of
all, which had been too far away for comprehen
sion at the beginning. There was no mystery
now. A rough, narrow shed, fully fifty feet in
length, imposed itself in an arbitrary line across
the face of this crowd, dividing it into two com
pact halves. Inside this shed, protected all round
by a waist-high barrier of boards, on top of which
ran a flat, table -like covering, were twenty men in

35°

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

their shirt-sleeves, toiling ceaselessly to keep abreast
of the crowd's thirst for beer. The actions of
these bar- tenders greatly impressed Theron. They
moved like so many machines, using one hand,
apparently, to take money and give change, and
with the other incessantly sweeping off rows of
empty glasses, and tossing forward in their place
fresh, foaming glasses five at a time. Hundreds
of arms and hands were continually stretched out,
on both sides of the shed, toward this streaming
bar, and through the babel of eager cries rose
without pause the racket of mallets tapping new
kegs.

Theron had never seen any considerable number
of his fellow-citizens engaged in drinking lager
beer before. His surprise at the facility of those
behind the bar began to yield, upon observation,
to a profound amazement at the thirst of those
before it. The same people seemed to be always
in front, emptying the glasses faster than the busy
men inside could replenish them, and clamoring
tirelessly for more. New-comers had to force their
way to the bar by violent efforts, and once there
they stayed until pushed bodily aside. There
were actually women to be seen here and there in
the throng, elbowing and shoving like the rest for
a place at the front. Some of the more gallant
young men fought their way outward, from time to
time, carrying for safety above their heads glasses
of beer which they gave to young and pretty girls,

35'

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

standing on the fringe of the crowd, among the
trees.

Everywhere a remarkable good-humor prevailed.
Once a sharp fight broke out, just at the end of
the bar nearest Theron, and one young man was
knocked down. A rush of the onlookers confused
everything before the minister's eyes for a minute,
and then he saw the aggrieved combatant up on
his legs again, consenting under the kindly pres
sure of the crowd to shake hands with his antag
onist, and join him in more beer. The incident
caught his fancy. There was something very
pleasingly human, he thought, in this primitive
readiness to resort to fisticuffs, and this frank
and genial reconciliation.

Perhaps there was something contagious in this
wholesale display of thirst, for the Rev. Mr. Ware
became conscious of a notion that he should like
to try a glass of beer. He recalled having heard
that lager was really a most harmless beverage.
Of course it was out of the question that he should
show himself at the bar. Perhaps some one would
bring him out a glass, as if he were a pretty girl.
He looked about for a possible messenger. Turn
ing, he found himself face to face with two smiling
people, into whose eyes he stared for an instant in
dumfounded blankness. Then his countenance
flashed with joy, and he held out both hands in
greeting. It was Father Forbes and Celia.

" We stole down upon you unawares," said the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

priest, in his cheeriest manner. He wore a brown
straw hat, and loose clothes hardly at all clerical
in form, and had Miss Madden' s arm drawn
lightly within his own. " We could barely believe
our eyes, — that it could be you whom we saw,
here among the sinners ! "

" I am in love with your sinners," responded
Theron, as he shook hands with Celia, and trusted
himself to look fully into her eyes. " I 've had
five days of the saints, over in another part of the
woods, and they 've bored the head off me."

** 353

CHAPTER XXIII

AT the command of Father Forbes, a lad who
was loitering near them went down through the
throng to the bar, and returned with three glasses
of beer. It pleased the Rev. Mr. Ware that the
priest should have taken it for granted that he
would do as the others did. He knocked his glass
against theirs in compliance with a custom strange
to him, but which they seemed to understand very
well. The beer itself was not so agreeable to the
taste as he had expected, but it was cold and
refreshing.

When the boy had returned with the glasses,
the three stood for a moment in silence, medi
tatively watching the curious scene spread below
them. Beyond the bar, Theron could catch now
through the trees regularly recurring glimpses of
four or five swings in motion. These were
nearest him, and clearest to the vision as well, at
the instant when they reached their highest for
ward point. The seats were filled with girls,
some of them quite grown young women, and
their curving upward sweep through the air was
disclosing at its climax a remarkable profusion of
white skirts and black stockings. The sight

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

struck him as indecorous in the extreme, and he
turned his eyes away. They met Celia's; and
there was something latent in their brown depths
which prompted him, after a brief dalliance of
interchanging glances, to look again at the swings.

" That old maid Curran is really too ridiculous,
with those white stockings of hers," remarked
Celia ; " some friend ought to tell her to dye
them."

" Or pad them," suggested Father Forbes, with
a gay little chuckle. " I daresay the question of
swings and ladies' stockings hardly arises with you,
over at the camp-meeting, Mr. Ware ? "

Theron laughed aloud at the conceit. " I
should say not ! " he replied.

" I 'm just dying to see a camp-meeting ! " said
Celia. (< You hear such racy accounts of what
goes on at them."

" Don't go, I beg of you ! " urged Theron, with
doleful emphasis. " Don't let 's even talk about
them. I should like to feel this afternoon as if
there was no such thing within a thousand miles
of me as a camp-meeting. Do you know, all this
interests me enormously. It is a revelation to me
to see these thousands of good, decent, ordinary
people, just frankly enjoying themselves like human
beings. I suppose that in this whole huge crowd
there is n't a single person who will mention the
subject of his soul to any other person all day
long."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" I should think the assumption was a safe one,"
said the priest, smilingly, " unless," he added
on after-thought, "it be by way of a genial
profanity. There used to be some old Clare men
who said * Hell to my soul ! ' when they missed at
quoits, but I have n't heard it for a long time. I
daresay they 're all dead."

"I shall never forget that death- bed — where
I saw you first," remarked Theron, musingly. " I
date from that experience a whole new life. I
have been greatly struck lately, in reading our
' Northern Christian Advocate ' to see in the
obituary notices of prominent Methodists how over
and over again it is recorded that they got religion
in their youth through being frightened by some
illness of their own, or some epidemic about them.
The cholera year of 1832 seems to have made
Methodists hand over fist. Even to this day our
most successful revivalists, those who work conver
sions wholesale wherever they go, do it more by
frightful pictures of hell- fire surrounding the sin
ner's death-bed than anything else. You could
hear the same thing at our camp-meeting to-night,
if you were there."

" There is n't so much difference as you think,"
said Father Forbes, dispassionately. " Your peo
ple keep examining their souls, just as children
keep pulling up the bulbs they have planted to see
are there any roots yet. Our people are more
satisfied to leave their souls alone, once they have

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

been planted, so to speak, by baptism. But fear
of hell governs them both, pretty much alike. As
I remember saying to you once before, there is
really nothing new under the sun. Even the say
ing is n't new. Though there seem to have been
the most tremendous changes in races and civili
zations and religions, stretching over many thou
sands of years, yet nothing is in fact altered very
much. Where religions are concerned, the human
race are still very like savages in a dangerous
wood in the dark, telling one another ghost stories
around a camp-fire. They have always been like
that."

" What nonsense ! " cried Celia. " I have no
patience with such gloomy rubbish. The Greeks
had a religion full of beauty and happiness and
light-heartedness, and they were n't frightened of
death at all. They made the image of death a
beautiful boy, with a torch turned down. Their
greatest philosophers openly preached and prac
tised the doctrine of suicide when one was tired
of life. Our own early Church was full of these
broad and beautiful Greek ideas. You know that
yourself! And it was only when your miserable
Jeromes and Augustines and Cyrils brought in the
abominable meannesses and cruelties of the Jewish
Old Testament, and stamped out the sane and
lovely Greek elements in the Church, that Chris
tians became the poor, whining, cowardly egotists
they are, troubling about their little tin-pot souls,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and scaring themselves in their churches by skulls
and crossbones."

" My dear Celia," interposed the priest, patting
her shoulder gently, "we will have no Greek
debate to-day. Mr. Ware has been permitted to
taboo camp- meetings, and I claim the privilege to
cry off on Greeks. Look at those fellows down
there, trampling over one another to get more
beer. What have they to do with Athens, or
Athens with them? I take it, Mr. Ware," he
went on, with a grave face but a twinkling eye,
" that what we are observing here in front of us is
symbolical of a great ethical and theological revo
lution, which in time will modify and control the
destiny of the entire American people. You see
those young Irishmen there, struggling like pigs at
a trough to get their fill of German beer. That
signifies a conquest of Teuton over Kelt more
important and far-reaching in its results than the
landing of Hengist and Horsa. The Kelt has
come to grief heretofore — or at least been forced
to play second fiddle to other races — because he
lacked the right sort of a drink. He has in his
blood an excess of impulsive, imaginative, even
fantastic qualities. It is much easier for him to
make a fool of himself, to begin with, than it is for
people of slower wits and more sluggish tempera
ments. When you add whiskey to that, or that
essence of melancholia which in Ireland they call
'porther,' you get the Kelt at his very weakest

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and worst. These young men down there are
changing all that. They have discovered lager.
Already many of them can outdrink the Germans
at their own beverage. The lager- drinking Irish
man in a few generations will be a new type of
humanity, — the Kelt at his best. He will domi
nate America. He will be the American. And
his church — with the Italian element thrown
clean out of it, and its Pope living, say, in Balti
more or Georgetown — will be the Church of
America."

" Let us have some more lager at once," put in
Celia. " This revolution can't be hurried forward
too rapidly."

Theron could not feel sure how much of the
priest's discourse was in jest, how much in earnest.
" It seems to me," he said, " that as things are
going, it does n't look much as if the America of
the future will trouble itself about any kind of a
church. The march of science must very soon
produce a universal scepticism. It is in the
nature of human progress. What all intelligent
men recognize to-day, the masses must surely
come to see in time."

Father Forbes laughed outright this time. " My
dear Mr. Ware," he said, as they touched glasses
again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been
brought them, " of all our fictions there is none
so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that
humanity progresses. The savage's natural im-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

pression is that the world he sees about him was
made for him, and that the rest of the universe is
subordinated to him and his world, and that all
the spirits and demons and gods occupy them
selves exclusively with him and his affairs. That
idea was the basis of every pagan religion, and it
is the basis of the Christian religion, simply be
cause it is the foundation of human nature. That
foundation is just as firm and unshaken to-day as it
was in the Stone Age. It will always remain, and
upon it will always be built some kind of a reli
gious superstructure. ' Intelligent men,' as you call
them, really have very little influence, even when
they all pull one way. The people as a whole
soon get tired of them. They give too much
trouble. The most powerful forces in human
nature are self-protection and inertia. The mid
dle-aged man has found out that the chief wisdom
in life is to bend to the pressures about him, to
shut up and do as others do. Even when he
thinks he has rid his own mind of superstitions,
he sees that he will best enjoy a peaceful life by
leaving other peoples' superstitions alone. That
is always the ultimate view of the crowd."

" But I don't see," observed Theron, " granting
that all this is true, how you think the Catholic
Church will come out on top. I could under
stand it of Unitarian! sm, or Universalism, or the
Episcopal Church, where nobody seems to have to
believe particularly in anything except the beauty

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of its burial service, but I should think the very
rigidity of the Catholic creed would make it im
possible. There everything is hard and fast;
nothing is elastic ; there is no room for compro
mise."

" The Church is always compromising," ex
plained the priest, " only it does it so slowly that no
one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the
trick. No ; the great secret of the Catholic Church
is that it does n't debate with sceptics. No matter
what points you make against it, it is never be
trayed into answering back. It simply says these
things are sacred mysteries, which you are quite
free to accept and be saved, or reject and be
damned. There is something intelligible and fine
about an attitude like that. When people have
grown tired of their absurd and fruitless wrangling
over texts and creeds which, humanly speaking,
are all barbaric nonsense, they will come back to
repose pleasantly under the Catholic roof, in that
restful house where things are taken for granted.
There the manners are charming, the service
excellent, the decoration and upholstery most
acceptable to the eye, and the music " — he made
a little mock bow here to Celia — " the music at
least is divine. There you have nothing to do
but be agreeable, and avoid scandal, and observe
the convenances. You are no more expected to
express doubts about the Immaculate Conception
than you are to ask the lady whom you take down

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to dinner how old she is. Now that is, as I have
said, an intelligent and rational church for people
to have. As the Irish civilize themselves, — you
observe them diligently engaged in the process
down below there, — and the social roughness of
their church becomes softened and ameliorated,
Americans will inevitably be attracted toward it.
In the end, it will embrace them all, and be
modified by them, and in turn influence their
development, till you will have a new nation
and a new national church, each representative
of the other."

" And all this is to be done by lager beer ! "
Theron ventured to comment, jokingly. He was
conscious of a novel perspiration around the bridge
of his nose, which was obviously another effect of
the drink.

The priest passed the pleasantry by. " No,"
he said seriously ; " what you must see is that
there must always be a church. If one did not
exist, it would be necessary to invent it. It is
needed, first and foremost, as a police force. It
is needed, secondly, so to speak, as a fire insur
ance. It provides the most even temperature and
pure atmosphere for the growth of young children.
It furnishes the best obtainable social machinery
for marrying off one's daughters, getting to know
the right people, patching up quarrels, and so on.
The priesthood earn their salaries as the agents
for these valuable social arrangements. Their

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

theology is thrown in as a sort of intellectual
diversion, like the ritual of a benevolent organiza
tion. There are some who get excited about this
part of it, just as one hears of Free-Masons who
believe that the sun rises and sets to exemplify
their ceremonies. Others take their duties more
quietly, and, understanding just what it all amounts
to, make the best of it, like you and me."

Theron assented to the philosophy and the
compliment by a grave bow. " Yes, that is the
idea, — to make the best of it," he said, and
fastened his regard boldly this time upon the
swings.

" We were both ordained by our bishops,"
continued the priest, " at an age when those
worthy old gentlemen would not have trusted our
combined wisdom to buy a horse for them."

" And I was married," broke in Theron, with
an eagerness almost vehement, " when I had only
just been ordained ! At the worst, you had only
the Church fastened upon your back, before you
were old enough to know what you wanted. It is
easy enough to make the best of that ; but it is
different with me."

A marked silence followed this outburst. The
Rev. Mr. Ware had never spoken of his marriage
to either of these friends before ; and something
in their manner seemed to suggest that they did
not find the subject inviting, now that it had been
broached. He himself was filled with a desire to

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

say more about it. He had never clearly realized
before what a genuine grievance it was. The
moisture at the top of his nose merged itself into
tears in the corners of his eyes, as the cruel enor
mity of the sacrifice he had made in his youth rose
before him. His whole life had been fettered and
darkened by it. He turned his gaze from the
swings toward Celia, to claim the sympathy he
knew she would feel for him.

But Celia was otherwise engaged. A young
man had come up to her, — a tall and extremely
thin young man, soberly dressed, and with a long,
gaunt, hollow-eyed face, the skin of which seemed
at once florid and pale. He had sandy hair and
the rough hands of a workman ; but he was speak
ing to Miss Madden in the confidential tones of
an equal.

" I can do nothing at all with him," this new
comer said to her. " He '11 not be said by me.
Perhaps he 'd listen to you ! "

" It 's likely I '11 go down there ! " said Celia.
" He may do what he likes for all me ! Take
my advice, Michael, and just go your way, and
leave him to himself. There was a time when I
would have taken out my eyes for him, but it was
love wasted and thrown away. After the warnings
he 's had, if he will bring trouble on himself, let
us make it no affair of ours."

Theron had found himself exchanging glances
of inquiry with this young man. "Mr. Ware,"

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

said Celia, here, " let me introduce you to my
brother Michael, — my full brother."

Mr. Ware remembered him now, and began,
in response to the other's formal bow, to say some
thing about their having met in the dark, inside
the church. But Celia held up her hand. " I 'm
afraid, Mr. Ware," she said hurriedly, " that you
are in for a glimpse of the family skeleton. I will
apologize for the infliction in advance."

Wonderingly, Theron followed her -look, and saw
another young man who had come up the path
from the crowd below, and was close upon them.
The minister recognized in him a figure which had
seemed to be the centre of almost every group
about the bar that he had studied in detail. He
was a small, dapper, elegantly attired youth, with
dark hair, and the handsome, regularly carved face
of an actor. He advanced with a smiling counte
nance and unsteady step, — his silk hat thrust back
upon his head, his frock-coat and vest unbuttoned,
and his neckwear disarranged, — and saluted the
company with amiability.

"I saw you up here, Father Forbes," he said,
with a thickened and erratic utterance. " Why n't
you come down and join us? I 'm setting 'em up
for everybody. You got to take care of the boys,
you know. I '11 blow in the last cent I 've got in
the world for the boys, every time, and they know
it. They 're solider for me than they ever were
for anybody, That 's how it is. If you stand by

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the boys, the boys '11 stand by you. I 'm going
to the Assembly for this district, and they ain't
nobody can stop me. The boys are just red hot
for me. Wish you 'd come down, Father Forbes,
and address a few words to the meeting, — just
mention that I 'm a candidate, and say I 'm bound
to win, hands down. That '11 make you solid with
the boys, and we '11 be all good fellows together.
Come on down ! "

The priest affably disengaged his arm from the
clutch which the speaker had laid upon it, and
shook his head in gentle deprecation. " No, no ;
you must excuse me, Theodore," he said. "We
mustn't meddle in politics, you know."

" Politics be damned ! " urged Theodore, grab
bing the priest's other arm, and tugging at it
stoutly to pull him down the path. " I say,
boys ! " he shouted to those below, "here 's Father
Forbes, and he 's going to come down and address
the meeting. Come on, Father ! Come down,
and have a drink with the boys ! "

It was Celia who sharply pulled his hand away
from the priest's arm this time. "Go away with
you ! " she snapped in low, angry tones at the
intruder. "You should be ashamed of yourself!
If you can't keep sober yourself, you can at least
keep your hands off the priest. I should think
you 'd have more decency, when you 're in such a
state as this, than to come where I am. If you 've
no respect for yourself, you might have that much
respect for me ! And before strangers, too ! "

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Oh, I must n't come where you are, eh ? "
remarked the peccant Theodore, straightening
himself with an elaborate effort. " You 've bought
these woods, have you ? I Ve got a hundred
friends here, all the same, for every one you '11
ever have in your life, Red-head, and don't you
forget it."

" Go and spend your money with them, then, and
don't come insulting decent people," said Celia.

" Before strangers, too ! " the young man called
out, with beery sarcasm. " Oh, we '11 take care of
the strangers all right." He had not seemed to
be aware of Theron's presence, much less his
identity, before ; but he turned to him now with a
knowing grin. " I 'm running for the Assembly,
Mr. Ware," he said, speaking loudly and with
deliberate effort to avoid the drunken elisions and
comminglings to which his speech tended, " and I
want you to fix up the Methodists solid for me.
I 'm going to drive over to the camp-meeting
to-night, me and some of the boys in a barouche,
and I '11 put a twenty-dollar bill on their plate.
Here it is now, if you want to see it."

As the young man began fumbling in a
vest-pocket, Theron gathered his wits together.
"You'd better not go this evening," he said, as
convincingly as he knew how ; " because the gates
will be closed very early, and the Saturday- evening
services are of a particularly special nature, quite
reserved for those living on the grounds."

367

"Rats ! " said Theodore, raising his head, and
abandoning the search for the bill. " Why don't
you speak out like a man, and say you think I 'in
too drunk? "

" I don't think that is a question which need
arise between us, Mr. Madden.," murmured Theron,
confusedly.

" Oh, don't you make any mistake ! A hell of
a lot of questions arise between us, Mr. Ware,"
cried Theodore, with a sudden accession of vigor
in tone and mien. "And one of 'em is — go away
from me, Michael ! — one of 'em is, I say, why
don't you leave our girls alone ? They Ve got
their own priests to make fools of themselves over,
without any sneak of a Protestant parson coming
meddling round them. You 're a married man
into the bargain ; and you Ve got in your house
this minute a piano that my sister bought and paid
for. Oh, I Ve seen the entry in Thurston's books !
You have the cheek to talk to me about being
drunk — why — "

These remarks were never concluded, for Father
Forbes here clapped a hand abruptly over the
offending mouth, and flung his free arm in a tight
grip around the young man's waist. "Come with
me, Michael ! " he said, and the two men led the
reluctant and resisting Theodore at a sharp pace
off into the woods.

Theron and Celia stood and watched them dis
appear among the undergrowth. " It 's the dirty

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Foley blood that's in him," he heard her say, as
if between clenched teeth.

The girl's big brown eyes, when Theron looked
into them again, were still fixed upon the screen
of foliage, and dilated like those of a Medusa
mask. The blood had gone away, and left the
fair face and neck as white, it seemed to him, as
marble. Even her lips, fiercely bitten together,
appeared colorless. The picture of consuming
and powerless rage which she presented, and the
shuddering tremor which ran over her form, as
visible as the quivering track of a gust of wind
across a pond, awed and frightened him.

Tenderness toward her helpless state came too,
and uppermost. He drew her arm into his, and
turned their backs upon the picnic scene.

" Let us walk a little up the path into the
woods," he said, " and get away from all this."

"The further away the better," she answered
bitterly, and he felt the shiver run through her
again as she spoke.

The methodical waltz-music from that unseen
dancing platform rose again above all other sounds.
They moved up the woodland path, their steps in
sensibly falling into the rhythm of its strains, and
vanished from sight among the trees.

369

CHAPTER XXIV

THERON and Celia walked in silence for some
minutes, until the noises of the throng they had
left behind were lost. The path they followed
had grown indefinite among the grass and creepers
of the forest carpet ; now it seemed to end alto
gether in a little copse of young birches, the deli
cately graceful stems of which were clustered about
a parent stump, long since decayed and overgrown
with lichens and layers of thick moss.

As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon
her knees, then threw herself face forward upon
the soft green bank which had formed itself above
the roots of the ancient mother-tree. Her com
panion looked down in pained amazement at what
he saw. Her body shook with the violence of
recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief.
Her hands, with stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug
into the moss and tangle of tiny vines, and tore
them by the roots. The half-stifled sounds of
weeping that arose from where her face grovelled
in the leaves were terrible to his ears. He knew
not what to say or do, but gazed in resourceless
suspense at the strange figure she made. It

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

seemed a cruelly long time that she lay there,
almost at his feet, struggling fiercely with the
fury that was in her.

All at once the paroxysms passed away, the
sounds of wild weeping ceased. Celia sat up, and
with her handkerchief wiped the tears and leafy
fragments from her face. She rearranged her hat
and the braids of her hair with swift, instinctive
touches, brushed the woodland debris from her
front, and sprang to her feet.

'•' I 'm all right now," she said briskly. There
was palpable effort in her light tone, and in the
stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her
blotched and perturbed countenance, but they
were only too welcome to Theron's anxious mood.

" Thank God ! " he blurted out, all radiant with
relief. " I feared you were going to have a fit —
or something."

Celia laughed, a little artificially at first, then
with a genuine surrender to the comic side of his
visible fright. The mirth came back into the
brown depths of her eyes again, and her face
cleared itself of tear-stains and the marks of agi
tation. " I am a nice quiet party for a Methodist
minister to go walking in the woods with, am I
not?" she cried, shaking her skirts and smiling
at him.

" I am not a Methodist minister — please ! "
answered Theron, — "at least not to-day, — and
here — with you ! I am just a man, — nothing

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

more, — a man who has escaped from lifelong
imprisonment, and feels for the first time what it
is to be free ! "

" Ah, my friend," Celia said, shaking her head
slowly, " I 'm afraid you deceive yourself. You
are not by any means free. You are only look
ing out of the window of your prison, as you call
it. The doors are locked, just the same."

" I will smash them ! " he declared, with con
fidence. "Or for that matter, I have smashed
them, — battered them to pieces. You don't re
alize what progress I have made, what changes
there have been in me since that night, — you
remember that wonderful night ! I am quite
another being, I assure you ! And really it dates
from way beyond that, — why, from the very first
evening, when I came to you in the church. The
window in Father Forbes' room was open, and I
stood by it listening to the music next door, and
I could just faintly see on the dark window across
the alley- way a stained-glass picture of a woman.
I suppose it was the Virgin Mary. She had hair
like yours, and your face, too ; and that is why I
went into the church and found you. Yes, that
is why."

Celia regarded him with gravity. " You will
.get yourself into great trouble, my friend," she said.

" That 's where you 're wrong," put in Theron.
" Not that I 'd mind any trouble in this wide
world, so long as you called me ' my friend,' but

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

I 'm not going to get into any at all. I know a
trick worth two of that. I 've learned to be a
showman. I can preach now far better than I
used to, and I can get through my work in half
the time, and keep on the right side of my people,
and get along with perfect smoothness. I was too
green before. I took the thing seriously, and I
let every mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fan
atic worry me, and keep me on pins and needles.
I don't do that any more. I Ve taken a new
measure of life. I see now what life is really
worth, and I 'm going to have my share of it.
Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible
happiness for the rest of my days, simply because
I made a fool of myself when I was in my teens ?
Other men are not eternally punished like that,
for what they did as boys, and I won't submit to
it either. I will be as free to enjoy myself as —
as Father Forbes."

Celia smiled softly, and shook her head again.
" Poor man, to call him free ! " she said : "why,
he is bound hand and foot. You don't in the
least realize how he is hedged about, the work he
has to do, the thousand suspicious eyes that watch
his every movement, eager to bring the Bishop
down upon him. And then think of his sacrifice,
— the great sacrifice of all, — to never know what
love means, to forswear his manhood, to live a
forlorn, celibate life — you have no idea how sadly
that appeals to a woman."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Let us sit down here fora little," said Theron ;
" we seem at the end of the path." She seated
herself on the root-based mound, and he reclined
at her side, with an arm carelessly extended
behind her on the moss.

" I can see what you mean," he went on, after
a pause. " But to me, do you know, there is an
enormous fascination in celibacy. You forget that
I know the reverse of the medal. I know how the
mind can be cramped, the nerves harassed, the
ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence
darkened and belittled, by — by the other thing. I
have never talked to you before about my marriage."

" I don't think we 'd better talk about it now,"
observed Celia. "There must be many more
amusing topics."

He missed the spirit of her remark. " You are
right," he said slowly. " It is too sad a thing to
talk about. But there ! it is my lead, and I bear
it, and there 's nothing more to be said."

Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers
toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge
of Celia's penumbra of apparel.

" No," she said. " We must n't snivel, and we
must n't sulk. When I get into a rage it makes
me ill, and I storm my way through it and tear
things, but it does n't last long, and I come out of
it feeling all the better. I don't know that I Ve
ever seen your wife. I suppose she has n't got red
hair?"

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" I think it 's a kind of light brown," answered
Theron, with an effect of exerting his memory.

" It seems that you only take notice of hair in
stained-glass windows," was Celia's comment.

" Oh-h ! " he murmured reproachfully, " as
if — as if — but I won't say what I was going to."

"That 's not fair ! " she said. The little touch
of whimsical mockery which she gave to the
serious declaration was delicious to him. "You
have me at such a disadvantage ! Here am I rat
tling out whatever comes into my head, exposing
all my lightest emotions, and laying bare my very
heart in candor, and you meditate, you turn things
over cautiously in your mind, like a second Machia-
velli. I grow afraid of you ; you are so subtle
and mysterious in your reserves."

Theron gave a tug at the ribbon, to show the
joy he had in her delicate chaff. "«No, it is you
who are secretive," he said. " You never told me
about — about the piano."

The word was out ! A minute before it had
seemed incredible to him that he should ever have
the courage to utter it — but here it was. He
laid firm hold upon the ribbon, which it appeared
hung from her waist, and drew himself a trifle
nearer to her. " I could never have consented to
take it, I 'm afraid," he went on in a low voice,
" if I had known. And even as it is, I fear it
won't be possible."

"What are you afraid of?" asked Celia. "Why

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

should n't you take it ? People in your profession
never do get anything unless it 's given to them,
do they? I Ve always understood it was like that.
I Ve often read of donation parties — that 's what
they 're called, is n't it ? — where everybody is
supposed to bring some gift to the minister.
Very well, then, I Ve simply had a donation party
of my own, that 's all. Unless you mean that my
being a Catholic makes a difference. I had
supposed you were quite free from that kind of
prejudice."

" So I am ! Believe me, I am ! " urged Theron.
" When I 'm with you, it seems impossible to
realize that there are people so narrow and con
tracted in their natures as to take account of such
things. It is another atmosphere that I breathe
near you. How could you imagine that such a
thought — about our difference of creed — would
enter my head? In fact," he concluded with a
nervous half-laugh, " there is n't any such differ
ence. Whatever your religion is, it 's mine too.
You remember — you adopted me as a Greek."

"Did I?" she rejoined. "Well, if that's the
case, it leaves you without a leg to stand on. I
challenge you to find any instance where a Greek
made any difficulties about accepting a piano
from a friend. But seriously — while we are talk
ing about it — you introduced the subject : I
did n't — I might as well explain to you that I
had no such intention, when I picked the instni-

376

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ment out. It was later, when I was talking to
Thurston's people about the price, that the whim
seized me. Now it is the one fixed rule of my
life to obey my whims. Whatever occurs to me
as a possibly pleasant thing to do, straight like a
flash, I go and do it. It is the only way that a
person with means, with plenty of money, can
preserve any freshness of character. If they stop
to think what it would be prudent to do, they get
crusted over immediately. That is the curse of
rich people, — they teach themselves to distrust
and restrain every impulse toward unusual actions.
They get to feel that it is more necessary for
them to be cautious and conventional than it is
for others. I would rather work at a wash-tub
than occupy that attitude toward my bank account.
I fight against any sign of it that I detect rising
in my mind. The instant a wish occurs to me, I
rush to gratify it. That is my theory of life.
That accounts for the piano ; and I don't see that
you've anything to say about it at all."

It seemed very convincing, this theory of life.
Somehow, the thought of Miss Madden's riches
had never before assumed prominence in Theron's
mind. Of course her father was very wealthy, but
it had not occurred to him that the daughter's
emancipation might run to the length of a personal
fortune. He knew so little of rich people and
their ways !

He lifted his head, and looked up at Celia
377

with an awakened humility and awe in his glance.
The glamour of a separate banking-account shone
upon her. Where the soft woodland light played
in among the strands of her disordered hair, he
saw the veritable gleam of gold. A mysterious
new suggestion of power blended itself with the
beauty of her face, was exhaled in the faint per
fume of her garments. He maintained a timorous
hold upon the ribbon, wondering at his hardihood
in touching it, or being near her at all.

" What surprises me," he heard himself saying,
" is that you are contented to stay in Octavius.
I should think that you would travel — go abroad
— see the beautiful things of the world, surround
yourself with the luxuries of big cities, — and that
sort of thing."

Celia regarded the forest prospect straight in
front of her with a pensive gaze. " Sometime —
no doubt I will sometime," she said abstractedly.

" One reads so much nowadays," he went on,
" of American heiresses going to Europe and
marrying dukes and noblemen. I suppose you
will do that too. Princes would fight one another
foi you"

The least touch of a smile softened for an
instant the impassivity of her countenance. Then
she stared harder than ever at the vague, leafy
distance. "That is the old-fashioned idea," she
said, in a musing tone, " that women must belong
to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues, or

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

race- horses. You don't understand, my friend,
that I have a different view. I am myself, and I
belong to myself, exactly as much as any man.
The notion that any other human being could
conceivably obtain the slightest property rights in
me is as preposterous, as ridiculous, as — what
shall I say? — as the notion of your being taken
out with a chain on your neck and sold by auction
as a slave, down on the canal bridge. I should
be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any
other thought were possible to me."

" That is not the generally accepted view, I
should think," faltered Theron.

" No more is it the accepted view that young
married Methodist ministers should sit out alone
in the woods with red-headed Irish girls. No,
my friend, let us find what the generally accepted
views are, and as fast as we find them set our
heels on them. There is no other way to live
like real human beings. What on earth is it to
me that other women crawl about on all- fours,
and fawn like dogs on any hand that will buckle
a collar onto them, and toss them the leavings
of the table ? I am not related to them. I have
nothing to do with them. They cannot make any
rules for me. If pride and dignity and independ
ence are dead in them, why, so much the worse
for them ! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it is
no reason why I should get down and grovel also.
No ; I at least stand erect on my legs."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Mr. Ware sat up, and stared confusedly, with
round eyes and parted lips, at his companion.
Instinctively his brain dragged forth to the surface
those epithets which the doctor had hurled in
bitter contempt at her, — " mad ass, a mere bundle
of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness."
The words rose in their order on his memory,
hard and sharp-edged, like arrow-heads. But to
sit there, quite at her side ; to breathe the same
air, and behold the calm loveliness of her profile ;
to touch the ribbon of her dress, — and all the
while to hold these poisoned darts of abuse levelled
in thought at her breast, — it was monstrous. He
could have killed the doctor at that moment.
With an effort, he drove the foul things from his
mind, — scattered them back into the darkness.
He felt that he had grown pale, and wondered
if she had heard the groan that seemed to have
been forced from him in the struggle. Or was
the groan imaginary ?

Celia continued to sit unmoved, composedly
looking upon vacancy. Theron's eyes searched her
face in vain for any sign of consciousness that she
had astounded and bewildered him. She did not
seem to be thinking of him at all. The proud calm
of her thoughtful countenance suggested instead
occupation with lofty and remote abstractions and
noble ideals. Contemplating her, he suddenly
perceived that what she had been saying was great,
wonderful, magnificent. An involuntary thrill ran

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

through his veins at recollection of her words.
His fancy likened it to the sensation he used to
feel as a youth, when the Fourth of July reader
bawled forth that opening clause : " When, in the
course of human events, it becomes necessary," etc.
It was nothing less than another Declaration of
Independence he had been listening to.

He sank again recumbent at her side, and
stretched the arm behind her, nearer than before.
'•Apparently, then, you will never marry." His
voice trembled a little.

" Most certainly not ! " said Celia.

"You spoke so feelingly a little while ago," he
ventured along, with hesitation, " about how sadly
the notion of a priest's sacrificing himself — never
knowing what love meant — appealed to a woman.
I should think that the idea of sacrificing herself
would seem to her even sadder still."

"I don't remember that we mentioned that"
she replied. " How do you mean, — sacrificing
herself? "

Theron gathered some of the outlying folds of
her dress in his hand, and boldly patted and
caressed them. "You, so beautiful and so free,
with such fine talents and abilities," he murmured ;
"you, who could have the whole world at your
feet, — are you, too, never going to know what
love means? Do you call that no sacrifice? To
me it is the most terrible that my imagination can
conceive."

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Celia laughed, — a gentle, amused little laugh, in
which Theron's ears traced elements of tenderness.
"You must regulate that imagination of yours,"
she said playfully. " It conceives the thing that is
not. Pray, when" — and here, turning her head,
she bent down upon his face a gaze of arch
mock-seriousness — " pray, when did I describe
myself in these terms? When did I say that I
should never know what love meant?"

For answer Theron laid his head down upon his
arm, and closed his eyes, and held his face against
the draperies encircling her. " I cannot think ! "
he groaned.

The thing that came uppermost in his mind, as
it swayed and rocked in the tempest of emotion,
was the strange reminiscence of early childhood in
it all. It was like being a little boy again, nestling
in an innocent, unthinking transport of affection
against his mother's skirts. The tears he felt scald
ing his eyes were the spontaneous, unashamed
tears of a child ; the tremulous and exquisite
joy which spread, wave-like, over him, at once
reposeful and yearning, was full of infantile purity
and sweetness. He had not comprehended at all
before what wellsprings of spiritual beauty, what
limpid depths of idealism, his nature contained.

"We were speaking of our respective religions,"
he heard Celia say, as imperturbably as if there
had been no digression worth mentioning.

"Yes," he assented, and moved his head so that
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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

he looked up at her back hair, and the leaves high
above, mottled against the sky. The wish to lie
there, where now he could just catch the rose-leaf
line of her under-chin as well, was very strong upon
him. "Yes?" he repeated.

" I cannot talk to you like that," she said ;
and he sat up again shamefacedly.

" Yes — I think we were speaking of religions —
some time ago," he faltered, to relieve the situa
tion. The dreadful thought that she might be
annoyed began to oppress him.

" Well, you said whatever my religion was, it was
yours too. That entitles you at least to be told
what the religion is. Now, I am a Catholic."

Theron, much mystified, nodded his head. Could
it be possible, — was there coming a deliberate
suggestion that he should become a convert?
"Yes — I know," he murmured.

"But I should explain that I am only a Catholic
in the sense that its symbolism is pleasant to me.
You remember what Schopenhauer said, — you
cannot have the water by itself: you must also
have the jug that it is in. Very well ; the Catholic
religion is my jug. I put into it the things I like.
They were all there long ago, thousands of years
ago. The Jews threw them out ; we will put them
back again. We will restore art and poetry and
the love of beauty, and the gentle, spiritual, soulful
life. The Greeks had it ; and Christianity would
have had it too, if it had n't been for those brutes

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

they call the Fathers. They loved ugliness and
dirt and the thought of hell-fire. They hated
women. In all the earlier stages of the Church,
women were very prominent in it. Jesus himself
appreciated women, and delighted to have them
about him, and talk with them and listen to them.
That was the very essence of the Greek spirit ;
and it breathed into Christianity at its birth a
sweetness and a grace which twenty generations
of cranks and savages like Paul and Jerome and
Tertullian weren't able to extinguish. But the
very man, Cyril, who killed Hypatia, and thus
began the dark ages, unwittingly did another thing
which makes one almost forgive him. To please
the Egyptians, he secured the Church's acceptance
of the adoration of the Virgin. It is that idea
which has kept the Greek spirit alive, and grown
and grown, till at last it will rule the world. It
was only epileptic Jews who could imagine a
religion without sex in it."

" I remember the pictures of the Virgin in your
room," said Theron, feeling more himself again.
" I wondered if they quite went with the statues."

The remark won a smile from Celia's lips.

" They get along together better than you sup
pose," she answered. " Besides, they are not all
pictures of Mary. One of them, standing on the
moon, is of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms.
Another might as well be Mahamie, bearing the
miraculously born Buddha, or Olympias with her

3*4

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

child Alexander, or even Perictione holding her
babe Plato, — all these were similar cases, you
know. Almost every religion had its Immaculate
Conception. What does it all come to, except to
show us that man turns naturally toward the worship
of the maternal idea? That is the deepest of all
our instincts, — love of woman, who is at once
daughter and wife and mother. It is that that
makes the world go round."

Brave thoughts shaped themselves in Theron's
mind, and shone forth in a confident yet wistful
smile on his face.

" It is a pity you cannot change estates with me
for one minute," he said, in steady, low tones.
"Then you would realize the tremendous truth of
what you have been saying. It is only your intel
lect that has reached out and grasped the idea.
If you were in my place, you would discover that
your heart was bursting with it as well."

Celia turned and looked at him.

" I myself," he went on, " would not have known,
half an hour ago, what you meant by the worship
of the maternal idea. I am much older than you.
I am a strong, mature man. But when I lay down
there, and shut my eyes, — because the charm and
marvel of this whole experience had for the mo
ment overcome me, — the strangest sensation
seized upon me. It was absolutely as if I were a
boy again, a good, pure-minded, fond little child,
and you were the mother that I idolized."
25 385

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Celia had not taken her eyes from his face. " I
find myself liking you better at this moment," she
said, with gravity, " than I have ever liked you
before."

Then, as by a sudden impulse, she sprang to her
feet. " Come ! " she cried, her voice and manner
all vivacity once more, " we have been here long
enough."

Upon the instant, as Theron was more labori
ously getting up, it became apparent to them both
that perhaps they had been there too long.

A boy with a gun under his arm, and two gray
squirrels tied by the tails slung across his shoulder,
stood at the entrance to the glade, some dozen
paces away, regarding them with undisguised inter
est. Upon the discovery that he was in turn ob
served, he resumed his interrupted progress through
the woods, whistling softly as he went, and van
ished among the trees.

" Heavens above ! " groaned Theron, shudder-
ingly.

"Know him?" he went on, in answer to the
glance of inquiry on his companion's face. " I
should think I did ! He spades my — my wife's
garden for her. He used to bring our milk. He
works in the law office of one of my trustees, — the
one who is n't friendly to me, but is very friendly
indeed with my — with Mrs. Ware. Oh, what
shall I do? It may easily mean my ruin ! "

Celia looked at him attentively. The color had

386

gone out of his face, and with it the effect of earn
estness and mental elevation which, a minute be
fore, had caught her fancy. " Somehow, I fear
that I do not like you quite so much just now, my
friend," she remarked.

" In God's name, don't say that ! " urged The-
ron. He raised his voice in agitated entreaty.
"You don't know what these people are, — how they
would leap at the barest hint of a scandal about
me. In my position I am a thousand times more
defenceless than any woman. Just a single whis
per, and I am done for ! "

" Let me point out to you, Mr. Ware," said
Celia, slowly, " that to be seen sitting and talking
with me, whatever doubts it may raise as to a gen
tleman's intellectual condition, need not necessa
rily blast his social reputation beyond all hope
whatever."

Theron stared at her, as if he had not grasped
her meaning. Then he winced visibly under it,
and put out his hands to implore her. " Forgive
me ! Forgive me ! " he pleaded. " I was beside
myself for the moment with the fright of the thing.
Oh, say you do forgive me, Celia ! " He made
haste to support this daring use of her name. " I
have been so happy to-day — so deeply, so vastly
happy — like the little child I spoke of — and
that is so new in my lonely life — that — the sud
denness of the thing — it just for the instant un
strung me. Don't be too hard on me for it !

387

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

And I had hoped, too, — I had had such genuine
heartfelt pleasure in the thought, — that, an hour
or two ago, whenj^z* were unhappy, perhaps it
had been some sort of consolation to you that I
was with you."

Celia was looking away. When he took her
hand she did not withdraw it, but turned and nod
ded in musing general assent to what he had said.
" Yes, we have both been unstrung, as you call it,
to-day," she said, " decidedly out of pitch. Let
each forgive the other, and say no more about it."

She took his arm, and they retraced their steps
along the path, again in silence. The labored
noise of the orchestra, as it were, returned to meet
them. They halted at an intersecting footpath.

" I go back to my slavery, — my double bond
age," said Theron, letting his voice sink to a sigh.
" But even if I am put on the rack for it, I shall
have had one day of glory."

" I think you may kiss me, in memory of that
one day — or of a few minutes in that day," said
Celia.

Their lips brushed each other in a swift, almost
perfunctory caress.

Theron went his way at a hurried pace, the
sobered tones of her "good-bye" beating upon
his brain with every measure of the droning waltz-
music.

388

PART IV

CHAPTER XXV

THE memory of the kiss abode with Theron.
Like Aaron's rod, it swallowed up one by one all
competing thoughts and recollections, and made
his brain its slave.

Even as he strode back through the woods to
the camp-meeting, it was the kiss that kept his
feet in motion, and guided their automatic course.
All along the watches of the restless night, it was
the kiss that bore him sweet company, and wan
dered with him from one broken dream of bliss to
another. Next day, it was the kiss that made of
life for him a sort of sunlit wonderland. He
preached his sermon in the morning, and took his
appointed part in the other services of afternoon
and evening, apparently to everybody's satisfac
tion : to him it was all a vision.

When the beautiful full moon rose, this Sunday
evening, and glorified the clearing and the forest
with its mellow harvest radiance, he could have
groaned with the burden of his joy. He went out

389

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

alone into the light, and bared his head to it, and
stood motionless for a long time. In all his life,
he had never been impelled as powerfully toward
earnest and soulful thanksgiving. The impulse to
kneel, there in the pure, tender moonlight, and
lift up offerings of praise to God, kept uppermost
in his mind. Some formless reservation restrained
him from the act itself, but the spirit of it hallowed
his mood. He gazed up at the broad luminous
face of the satellite. " You are our God," he
murmured. " Hers and mine ! You are the
most beautiful of heavenly creatures, as she is of
the angels on earth. I am speechless with rever
ence for you both."

It was not until the camp- meeting broke up,
four days later, and Theron with the rest returned
to town, that the material aspects of what had hap
pened, and might be expected to happen, forced
themselves upon his mind. The kiss was a child
of the forest. So long as Theron remained in the
camp, the image of the kiss, which was enshrined
in his heart and ministered to by all his thoughts,
continued enveloped in a haze of sylvan mystery,
like a dryad.' Suggestions of its beauty and holi
ness came to him in the odors of the woodland,
at the sight of wild flowers and water-lilies.
When he walked alone in unfamiliar parts of thus
forest, he carried about with him the half-conscious
idea of somewhere coming upon a strange, hidden
pool which mortal eye had not seen before, — a

39°

deep, sequestered mere of spring-fed waters, walled
in by rich, tangled growths of verdure, and bear
ing upon its virgin bosom only the shadows of the
primeval wilderness, and the light of the eternal
skies. His fancy dwelt upon some such nook as
the enchanted home of the fairy that possessed his
soul. The place, though he never found it, be
came real to him. As he pictured it, there rose
sometimes from among the lily-pads, stirring the
translucent depths and fluttering over the water's
surface drops like gems, the wonderful form of a
woman, with pale leaves wreathed in her luxuriant
red hair, and a skin which gave forth light.

With the home-coming to Octavius, his dreams
began to take more account of realities. In a day
or two he was wide awake, and thinking hard.
The kiss was as much as ever the ceaseless com
panion of his hours, but it no longer insisted upon
shrouding itself in vines and woodland creepers, or
outlining itself in phosphorescent vagueness against
mystic backgrounds of nymph- haunted glades. It
advanced out into the noonday, and assumed
tangible dimensions and substance. He saw that
it was related to the facts of his daily life, and had,
in turn, altered his own relations to all these
facts.

What ought he to do? What could he do?
Apparently, nothing but wait. He waited for a
week, — then for another week. The conclusion
that the initiative had been left to him began to

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

take shape in his mind. From this it seemed but
a step to the passionate resolve to act at once.

Turning the situation over and over in his
anxious thoughts, two things stood out in special
prominence. One was that Celia loved him.
The other was that the boy in Gorringe's law
office, and possibly Gorringe, and heaven only
knew how many others besides, had reasons for
suspecting this to be true.

And what about Celia? Side by side with the
moving rapture of thinking about her as a woman,
there rose the substantial satisfaction of contem
plating her as Miss Madden. She had kissed him,
and she was very rich. The things gradually
linked themselves before his eyes. He tried a
thousand varying guesses at what she proposed to
do, and each time reined up his imagination by
the reminder that she was confessedly a creature
of whims, who proposed to do nothing, but was
capable of all things.

And as to the boy. If he had blabbed what he
saw, it was incredible that somebody should not
take the subject up, and impart a scandalous twist
to it, and send it rolling like a snowball to gather
up exaggeration and foul innuendo till it was big
enough to overwhelm him. What would happen
to him if a formal charge were preferred against
him? He looked it up in the Discipline. Of
course, if his accusers magnified their mean sus
picions and calumnious imaginings to the point of

392

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

formulating a charge, it would be one of immo
rality. They could prove nothing ; there was noth
ing to prove. At the worst, it was an indiscretion,
which would involve his being admonished by his
Presiding Elder. Or if these narrow bigots con
fused slanders with proofs, and showed that they
intended to convict him, then it would be open to
him to withdraw from the ministry, in advance of
his condemnation. His relation to the church
would be the same as if he had been expelled, but
to the outer world it would be different. And
supposing he did withdraw from the ministry?

Yes ; this was the important point. What if he
did abandon this mistaken profession of his? On
its mental side the relief would be prodigious,
unthinkable. But on the practical side, the bread-
and-butter side? For some days Theron paused
with a shudder when he reached this question.
The thought of the plunge into unknown material
responsibilities gave him a sinking heart. He
tried to imagine himself lecturing, canvassing for
books or insurance policies, writing for newspapers
— and remained frightened. But suddenly one
day it occurred to him that these qualms and
forebodings were sheer folly. Was not Celia
rich? Would she not with lightning swiftness
draw forth that check-book, like the flashing sword
of a champion from its scabbard, and run to his
relief? Why, of course. It was absurd not to
have thought of that before.

393

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He recalled her momentary anger with him,
that afternoon in the woods, when he had cried
out that discovery would mean ruin to him. He
saw clearly enough now that she had been grieved
at his want of faith in her protection. In his
flurry of fright, he had lost sight of the fact that,
if exposure and trouble came to him, she would
naturally feel that she had been the cause of his
martyrdom. It was plain enough now. If he
got into hot water, it would be solely on account
of his having been seen with her. He had walked
into the woods with her, — " the further the better "
had been her own words, — out of pure kindliness,
and the desire to lead her away from the scene of
her brother's and her own humiliation. But why
amplify arguments? Her own warm heart would
tell her, on the instant, how he had been sacri
ficed for her sake, and would bring her, eager
and devoted, to his succor.

That was all right, then. Slowly, from this point,
suggestions expanded themselves. The future
could be, if he willed it, one long serene triumph
of love, and lofty intellectual companionship, and
existence softened and enriched at every point by
all that wealth could command, and the most
exquisite tastes suggest. Should he will it ! Ah !
the question answered itself. But he could not
enter upon this beckoning heaven of a future
until he had freed himself. When Celia said to
him, " Come ! " he must not be in the position to

394

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

reply, "I should like to, but unfortunately I am
tied by the leg." He should have to leave Octa-
vius, leave the ministry, leave everything. He
could not begin too soon to face these contin
gencies.

Very likely Celia had not thought it out as far
as this. With her, it was a mere vague " some
time I may." But the harder masculine sense,
Theron felt, existed for the very purpose of cor
recting and giving point to these loose feminine
notions of time and space. It was for him to
clear away the obstacles, and map the plans out
with definite decision.

One warm afternoon, as he lolled in his easy-
chair under the open window of his study, musing
upon the ever-shifting phases of this vast, com
plicated, urgent problem, some chance words from
the sidewalk in front came to his ears, and, coming,
remained to clarify his thoughts.

Two ladies whose voices were strange to him
had stopped — as so many people almost daily
stopped — to admire the garden of the parsonage.
One of them expressed her pleasure in general
terms. Said the other, —

" My husband declares those dahlias alone
couldn't be matched for fifty dollars, and that
some of those gladiolus must have cost three or
four dollars apiece. I know we've spent simply
ocears of money on our garden, and it does n't
begin to compare with this."

395

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" It seems like a sinful waste to me," said her
companion.

"No-o," the other hesitated. "No, I don't
think quite that — if you can afford it just as well
as not. But it does seem to me that I 'd rather
live in a little better house, and not spend it all
on flowers. Just look at that cactus ! "

The voices died away. Theron sat up, with a
look of arrested thought upon his face, then sprang
to his feet and mpved hurriedly through the parlor
to an open front window. Peering out with
caution he saw that the two women receding from
view were fashionably dressed and evidently came
from homes of means. He stared after them in
a blank way until they turned a corner.

He went into the hall then, put on his frock-
coat and hat, and stepped out into the garden.
He was conscious of having rather avoided it
heretofore, — not altogether without reasons of
his own, lying unexamined somewhere in the
recesses of his mind. Now he walked slowly
about, and examined the flowers with great atten-
tiveness. The season was advancing, and he saw
that many plants had gone out of bloom. But
what a magnificent plenitude of blossoms still
remained !

Fifty dollars' worth of dahlias, — that was what
the stranger had said. Theron hardly brought
himself to credit the statement ; but all the same
it was apparent to even his uninformed eye that

396

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

these huge, imbricated, flowering masses, with
their extraordinary half-colors, must be unusual.
He remembered that the boy in Gorringe's office
had spoken of just one lot of plants costing thirty-
one dollars and sixty cents, and there had been
two other lots as well. The figures remained sur
prisingly distinct in his memory. It was no good
deceiving himself any longer : of course these
were the plants that Gorringe had spent his money
upon, here all about him.

As he surveyed them with a sour regard, a cool
breeze stirred across the garden. The tall, over
laden flower-spikes of gladioli bent and nodded
at him ; the hollyhocks and flaming alvias, the
clustered blossoms on the standard roses, the deli
cately painted lilies on their stilt-like stems, fluttered
in the wind, and seemed all bowing satirically to
him. " Yes, Levi Gorringe paid for us ! " He
almost heard their mocking declaration.

Out in the back- yard, where a longer day of
sunshine dwelt, there were many other flowers, and
notably a bed of geraniums which literally made
the eye ache. Standing at this rear corner of the
house, he caught the droning sound of Alice's voice,
humming a hymn to herself as she went about her
kitchen work. He saw her through the open win
dow. She was sweeping, and had a sort of cap on
her head which did not add to the graces of her ap
pearance. He looked at her with a hard glance,
recalling as a fresh grievance the ten days of intoler^

397

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

able boredom he had spent cooped up in a ridicu
lous little tent with her, at the camp-meeting. She
must have realized at the time how odious the en
forced companionship was to him. Yes, beyond
doubt she did. It came back to him now that they
had spoken but rarely to each other. She had not
even praised his sermon upon the Sabbath-question,
which every one else had been in raptures over.
For that matter she no longer praised anything he
did, and took obvious pains to preserve toward him
a distant demeanor. So much the better, he felt
himself thinking. If she chose to behave in that
offish and unwifely fashion, she could blame no one
but herself for its results.

She had seen him, and came now to the window,
watering-pot and broom in hand. She put her
head out, to breathe a breath of dustless air, and
began as if she would smile on him. Then her
face chilled and stiffened, as she caught his look.

" Shall you be home for supper? " she asked, in
her iciest tone.

He had not thought of going out before. The
question, and the manner of it, gave immediate
urgency to the idea of going somewhere. " I may
or I may not," he replied. " It is quite impossible
for me to say." He turned on his heel with this,
and walked briskly out of the yard and down the
street.

It was the most natural thing that presently he
should be strolling past the Madden house, and let-

39*

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ting a covert glance stray over its front and the
grounds about it, as he loitered along. Every day
since his return from the woods he had given the
fates this chance of bringing Celia to meet him,
without avail. He had hung about in the vicinity
of the Catholic church on several evenings as well,
but to no purpose. The organ inside was dumb,
and he could detect no signs of Celia's presence
on the curtains of the pastorate next door. This
day, too, there was no one visible at the home of
the Maddens, and he walked on, a little sadly. It
was weary work waiting for the signal that never
came.

But there were compensations. His mind re
verted doggedly to the flowers in his garden, and
to Alice's behavior toward him. They insisted
upon connecting themselves in his thoughts. Why
should Levi Gorringe, a money-lender, and there
fore the last man in the world to incur reckless
expenditure, go and buy perhaps a hundred dollars'
worth of flowers for his wife's garden? It was
time — high time — to face this question. And
his experiencing religion afterward, just when Alice
did, and marching down to the rail to kneel beside
her, — that was a thing to be thought of, too.

Meditation, it is true, hardly threw fresh light
upon the matter. It was incredible, of course,
that there should be anything wrong. To even
shape a thought of Alice in connection with gal
lantry would be wholly impossible. Nor could it

399

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

be said that Gorringe, in his new capacity as a
professing church- member, had disclosed any sign
of ulterior motives, or of insincerity. Yet there the
facts were. While Theron pondered them, their
mystery, if they involved a mystery, baffled him
altogether. But when he had finished, he found
himself all the same convinced that neither Alice
nor Gorringe would be free to blame him for any
thing he might do. He had grounds for complaint
against them. If he did not himself know just
what these grounds were, it was certain enough
that they knew. Very well, then, let them take the
responsibility for what happened.

It was indeed awkward that at the moment, as
Theron chanced to emerge temporarily from his
brown-study, his eyes fell full upon the spare, well-
knit form of Levi Gorringe himself, standing only
a few feet away, in the staircase entrance to his
law office. His lean face, browned by the summer's
exposure, had a more Arabian aspect than ever.
His hands were in his pockets, and he held an
unlighted cigar between his teeth. He looked the
Rev. Mr. Ware over calmly, and nodded recognition.

Theron had halted instinctively. On the instant
he would have given a great deal not to have
stopped at all. It was stupid of him to have
paused, but it would not do now to go on without
words of some sort. He moved over to the door
way, and made a half-hearted pretence of looking
at the photographs in one of the show-cases at its

400

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

side. As Mr. Gorringe did not take his hands from
his pockets, there was no occasion for any formal
greeting.

" I had no idea that they took such good pictures
in Octavius," Theron remarked after a minute's
silence, still bending in examination of the
photographs.

" They ought to ; they charge New York prices,"
observed the lawyer, sententiously.

Theron found in the words confirmation of his
feeling that Gorringe was not naturally a lavish or
extravagant man. Rather was he a careful and
calculating man, who spent money only for a pur
pose. Though the minister continued gazing at
the stiff presentments of local beauties and swains,
his eyes seemed to see salmon-hued hollyhocks
and spotted lilies instead. Suddenly a resolve
came to him. He stood erect, and faced his
trustee.

" Speaking of the price of things," he said, with
an effort of arrogance in his measured tone, " I
have never had an opportunity before of mention
ing the subject of the flowers you have so kindly
furnished for my — for my garden."

" Why mention it now? " queried Gorringe, with
nonchalance. He turned his cigar about with a
movement of his lips, and worked it into the
corner of his mouth. He did not find it neces
sary to look at Theron at all.

" Because," began Mr. Ware, and then hesitated
26 401

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

— "because — well, it raises a question of my
being under obligation, which I — "

" Oh, no, sir," said the lawyer ; " put that out
of your mind. You are no more under obligation
to me than I am to you. Oh, no, make yourself
easy about that. Neither of us owes the other
anything."

" Not even good-will, — I take that to be your
meaning," retorted Theron, with some heat.

"The words are yours, sir," responded Gorringe,
coolly. " I do not object to them."

"As you like," put in the other. " If it be so,
why, then all the more reason why I should, under
the circumstances — ."

"Under what circumstances?" interposed the
lawyer. " Let us be clear about this thing as we
go along. To what circumstances do you refer?"

He had turned his eyes now, and looked Theron
in the face. A slight protrusion of his lower jaw
had given the cigar an upward tilt under the black
mustache.

"The circumstances are that you have brought
or sent to my garden a great many very expensive
flower-plants and bushes and so on."

"And you object? I had not supposed that
clergymen in general — and you in particular —
were so sensitive. Have donation parties, then,
gone out of date? "

" I understand your sneer well enough," re
torted Theron, " but that can pass. The main

402

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

point is. that you did me the honor to send these
plants, — or to smuggle them in, — but never once
deigned to hint to me that you had done so. No
one told me. Except by mere accident, I should
not have known to this day where they came
from."

Mr. Gorringe twisted the cigar at another angle,
with lines of grim amusement about the corner of
his mouth. " I should have thought," he said with
dry deliberation, " that possibly this fact might
have raised in your mind the conceivable hypothe
sis that the plants might not be intended for you
at all."

"That is precisely it, sir," said Theron. There
were people passing, and he was forced to keep his
voice down. It would have been a relief, he felt,
to shout. " That is it, — they were not intended
for me."

"Well, then, what are you talking about?"
The lawyer's speech had become abrupt almost to
incivility.

" I think my remarks have been perfectly clear,"
said the minister, with dignity. It was a new
experience to be addressed in that fashion. It
occurred to him to add, " Please remember that
I am not in the witness-box, to be bullied or
insulted by a professional."

Gorringe studied Theron's face attentively with
a cold, searching scrutiny. " You may thank your
stars you 're not ! " he said, with significance.

403

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

What on earth could he mean ? The words and
the menacing tone greatly impressed Theron. In
deed, upon reflection, he found that they fright
ened him. The disposition to adopt a high tone
with the lawyer was melting away.

" I do not see," he began, and then deliberately
allowed his voice to take on an injured and plain
tive inflection, — "I do not see why you should
adopt this tone toward me — Brother Gorringe."

The lawyer scowled, and bit sharply into the
cigar, but said nothing.

" If I have unconsciously offended you in any
way," Theron went on, " I beg you to tell me how.
I liked you from the beginning of my pastorate
here, and the thought that latterly we seemed to
be drifting apart has given me much pain. But
now it is still more distressing to find you actually
disposed to quarrel with me. Surely, Brother
Gorringe, between a pastor and a probationer
who — "

"No," Gorringe broke in; "quarrel isn't the
word for it. There isn't any quarrel, Mr. Ware."
He stepped down from the door-stone to the side
walk as he spoke, and stood face to face with
Theron. Working-men with dinner-pails, and
factory girls, were passing close to them, and he
lowered his voice to a sharp, incisive half-whisper
as he added, " It would n't be worth any grown
man's while to quarrel with so poor a creature as
you are."

404

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Theron stood confounded, with an empty stare
of bewilderment on his face. It rose in his mind
that the right thing to feel was rage, righteous
indignation, fury ; but for the life of him, he could
not muster any manly anger. The character of
the insult stupefied him.

" I do not know that I have anything to say to
you in reply," he remarked, after what seemed to
him a silence of minutes. His lips framed the
words automatically, but they expressed well
enough the blank vacancy of his mind. The
suggestion that anybody deemed him a "poor
creature " grew more astounding, incomprehensi
ble, as it swelled in his brain.

" No, I suppose not," snapped Gorringe.
" You 're not the sort to stand up to men ; your
form is to go round the corner and take it out of
somebody weaker than yourself, — a defenceless
woman, for instance."

" Oh — ho ! " said Theron. The exclamation
had uttered itself. The sound of it seemed to
clarify his muddled thoughts ; and as they ranged
themselves in order, he began to understand.
" Oh — ho ! " he said again, and nodded his head
in token of comprehension.

The lawyer, chewing his cigar with increased
activity, glared at him. " What do you mean ? "
he demanded peremptorily.

" Mean ? " said the minister. " Oh, nothing
that I feel called upon to explain to you."

405

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

It was passing strange, but his self-possession
had all at once returned to him. As it became
more apparent that the lawyer was losing his
temper, Theron found the courage to turn up
the corners of his lips in show of a bitter little
smile of confidence. He looked into the other's
dusky face, and flaunted this smile at it in con
temptuous defiance. " It is not a subject that I
can discuss with propriety — at this stage," he
added.

" Damn you ! Are you talking about those
flowers?"

" Oh, I am not talking about anything in par
ticular," returned Theron, " not even the curious
choice of language which my latest probationer
seems to prefer."

"Go and strike my name off the list!" said
Gorringe, with rising passion. " I was a fool to
ever have it there. To think of being a proba
tioner of yours — my God ! "

"That will be a pity — from one point of view,"
remarked Theron, still with the ironical smile on
his lips. " You seemed to enter upon the new life
with such deliberation and fixity of purpose, too !
I can imagine the regrets your withdrawal will
cause, in certain quarters. I only hope that it will
not discourage those who accompanied you to the
altar, and shared your enthusiasm at the time."
He had spoken throughout with studied slowness
and an insolent nicety of utterance.

406

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" You had better go away ! " broke forth Gor-
ringe. "If you don't, I shall forget myself."

"For the first time?" asked Theron. Then,
warned by the flash in the lawyer's eye, he turned
on his heel and sauntered, with a painstaking
assumption of a mind quite at ease, up the
street.

Gorringe's own face twitched and his veins
tingled as he looked after him. He spat the
shapeless cigar out of his mouth into the gutter, and,
drawing forth another from his pocket, clenched it
between his teeth, his gaze following the tall form
of the Methodist minister till it was merged in
the crowd.

" Well, I 'm damned ! " he said aloud to himselt.

The photographer had come down to take in his
show-cases for the night. He looked up from his
task at the exclamation, and grinned inquiringly.

" I Ve just been talking to a man," said the
lawyer, " who 's so much meaner than any other
man I ever heard of that it takes my breath away.
He 's got a wife that 's as pure and good as gold,
and he knows it, and she worships the ground he
walks on, and he knows that too. And yet the
scoundrel is around trying to sniff out some shadow
of a pretext for misusing her worse than he 's
already done. Yes, sir ; he 'd be actually tickled
to death if he could nose up some hint of a
scandal about her, — something that he could pre
tend to believe, and work for his own advantage,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to levy blackmail, or get rid of her, or whatever
suited his book. I did n't think there was such an
out-and-out cur on this whole footstool. I almost
wish, by God, I 'd thrown him into the canal ! "

" Yes, you lawyers must run against some pretty
snide specimens," remarked the photographer,
lifting one of the cases from its sockets.

408

CHAPTER XXVI

THERON spent half an hour in aimless strolling
about the streets. From earliest boyhood his
mind had always worked most clearly when he
walked alone. Every mental process which had
left a mark upon his memory and his career, —
the day-dreams of future academic greatness and
fame which had fashjoned themselves in his brain
as a farm lad ; the meditations, raptures, and high
resolves of his student period at the seminary ; the
more notable sermons and powerful discourses by
which he had revealed the genius that was in
him to astonished and delighted assemblages, — all
were associated in his retrospective thoughts with
solitary rambles.

He had a very direct and vivid consciousness
now that it was good to be on his legs, and alone.
He had never in his life been more sensible of the
charm of his own companionship. The encounter
with Gorringe seemed to have cleared all the
clouds out of his brain, and restored lightness to
his heart. After such an object lesson, the impos
sibility of his continuing to sacrifice himself to a
notion of duty to these low-minded and coarse-
natured villagers was beyond all argument. There

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

could no longer be any doubt about his moral
right to turn his back upon them, to wash his
hands of the miserable combination of hypocrisy
and hysterics which they called their spiritual
life.

And the question of Gorringe and Alice, that
too stood precisely where he wanted it. Even in
his own thoughts, he preferred to pursue it no
further. Between them somewhere an offence of
concealment, it might be of conspiracy, had been
committed against him. It was no business of his
to say more, or to think more. He rested his case
simply on the fact, which could not be denied, and
which he was not in the least interested to have
explained, one way or the other. The recollection
of Gorringe's obvious disturbance of mind was
especially pleasant to him. He himself had been
magnanimous almost to the point of weakness.
He had gone out of his way to call the man
" brother," and to give him an opportunity of
behaving like a gentleman ; but his kindly for
bearance had been wasted. Gorringe was not the
man to understand generous feelings, much less
rise to their level. He had merely shown that he
would be vicious if he knew how. It was more
important and satisfactory to recall that he had
also shown a complete comprehension of the
injured husband's grievance. The fact that he
had recognized it was enough, — was, in fact,
everything.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

In the background of his thoughts Theron
had carried along a notion of going and dining
with Father Forbes when the time for the evening
meal should arrive. The idea in itself attracted
him, as a fitting capstone to his resolve not to go
home to supper. It gave just the right kind of
character to his domestic revolt. But when at last
he stood on the doorstep of the pastorate, waiting
for an answer to the tinkle of the electric bell he
had heard ring inside, his mind contained only the
single thought that now he should hear something
about Celia. Perhaps he might even find her
there ; but he put that- suggestion aside as slightly
unpleasant.

The hag-faced housekeeper led him, as before,
into the dining-room. It was still daylight, and
he saw on the glance that the priest was alone at
the table, with a book beside him to read from
as he ate.

Father Forbes rose and came forward, greeting
his visitor with profuse urbanity and smiles. If
there was a perfunctory note in the invitation to sit
down and share the meal, Theron did not catch it.
He frankly displayed his pleasure as he laid aside
his hat, and took the chair opposite his host.

" It is really only a few months since I was
here, in this room, before," he remarked, as the
priest closed his book and tossed it to one side,
and the housekeeper came in to lay another place.
" Yet it might have been years, many long years,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

so tremendous is the difference that the lapse of
time has wrought in me."

"I am afraid we have nothing to tempt you
very much, Mr. Ware," remarked Father Forbes,
with a gesture of his plump white hand which
embraced the dishes in the centre of the
table. "May I send you a bit of this boiled
mutton? I have very homely tastes when I am
by myself."

" I was saying," Theron observed, after some
moments had passed in silence, " that I date such
a tremendous revolution in my thoughts, my beliefs,
my whole mind and character, from my first meet
ing with you, my first coming here. I don't know
how to describe to you the enormous change that
has come over me ; and I owe it all to you."

"I can only hope, then, that it is entirely
of a satisfactory nature," said the priest, politely
smiling.

" Oh, it is so splendidly satisfactory ! " said
Theron, with fervor. " I look back at myself
now with wonder and pity. It seems incredible
that, such a little while ago, I should have been
such an ignorant and unimaginative clod of earth,
content with such petty ambitions and actually
proud of my limitations."

"And you have larger ambitions now?" asked
the other. " Pray let me help you to some pota
toes. I am afraid that ambitions only get in our
way and trip us up. We clergymen are like

412

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

street-car horses. The more steadily we jog along
between the rails, the better it is for us."

" Oh, I don't intend to remain in the ministry,"
declared Theron. The statement seemed to him
a little bald, now that he had made it ; and as his
companion lifted his brows in surprise, he added
stumblingly : " That is, as I feel now, it seems to
me impossible that I should remain much longer.
With you, of course, it is different. You have a
thousand things to interest and pleasantly occupy
you in your work and its ceremonies, so that
mere belief or non-belief in the dogma hardly
matters. But in our church dogma is everything.
If you take that away, or cease to have its support,
the rest is intolerable, hideous."

Father Forbes cut another slice of mutton for
himself. " It is a pretty serious business to make
such a change at your time of life. I take it for
granted you will think it all over very carefully
before you commit yourself." He said this with
an almost indifferent air, which rather chilled his
listener's enthusiasm.

"Oh, yes," Theron made answer; "I shall do
nothing rash. But I have a good many plans for
the future."

Father Forbes did not ask what these were, and
a brief further period of silence fell upon the table.

" I hope everything went off smoothly at the
picnic," Theron ventured, at last. " I have not
seen any of you since then."

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The priest shook his head and sighed. " No,"
he said. "It is a bad business. I have had a
great deal of unhappiness out of it this past fort
night. That young man who was rude to you —
of course it was mere drunken, irresponsible non
sense on his part — has got himself into a serious
scrape, I 'm afraid. It is being kept quite within
the family, and we hope to manage so that it will
remain there, but it has terribly upset his father
and his sister. But that, after all, is not so hard to
bear as the other affliction that has come upon the
Maddens. You remember Michael, the other
brother? He seems to have taken cold that
evening, or perhaps over-excited himself. He has
been seized with quick consumption. He will
hardly last till snow flies."

" Oh, I am grieved to hear that ! " Theron
spoke with tremulous earnestness. It seemed to
him as if Michael were in some way related to
him.

" It is very hard upon them all," the priest went
on. " Michael is as sweet and holy a character
as it is possible for any one to think of. He is
the apple of his father's eye. They were insepa
rable, those two. Do you know the father, Mr.
Madden?"

Theron shook his head. "I think I have seen
him," he said. " A small man, with gray
whiskers."

" A peasant," said Father Forbes, " but with a

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

heart of gold. Poor man ! he has had little enough
out of his riches. Ah, the West Coast people,
what tragedies I have seen among them over here !
They have rudimentary lung organizations, like a
frog's, to fit the mild, wet soft air they live in.
The sharp air here kills them off like flies in a
frost. Whole families go. I should think there
are a dozen of old Jeremiah's children in the cem
etery. If Michael could have passed his twenty-
eighth year, there would have been hope for him,
at least till his thirty-fifth. These pulmonary
things seem to go by sevens, you know."

" I did n't know," said Theron. "It is very
strange — and very sad." His startled mind was
busy, all at once, with conjectures as to Celia's
age.

" The sister — Miss Madden — seems extremely
strong," he remarked tentatively.

"Celia may escape the general doom," said the
priest. His guest noted that he clenched his
shapely white hand on the table as he spoke, and
that his gentle, carefully modulated voice had a
gritty hardness in its tone. " That would be too
dreadful to think of," he added.

Theron shuddered in silence, and strove to shut
his mind against the thought.

" She has taken Michael's illness so deeply to
heart," the priest proceeded, "and devoted her
self to him so untiringly that I get a little nervous
about her. I have been urging her to go away

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and get a change of air and scene, if only for a few
days. She does not sleep well, and that is always
a bad thing."

" I think I remember her telling me once that
sometimes she had sleepless spells," said Theron.
" She said that then she banged on her piano at
all hours, or dragged the cushions about from room
to room, like a wild woman. A very interesting
young lady, don't you find her so? "

Father Forbes let a wan smile play on his lips.
"What, our Celia?" he said. " Interesting !
Why, Mr. Ware, there is no one like her in the
world. She is as unique as — what shall I say ? —
as the Irish are among races. Her father and
mother were both born in mud-cabins, and she —
she might be the daughter of a hundred kings, ex
cept that they seem mostly rather under-witted
than otherwise. She always impresses me as a sort of
atavistic idealization of the old Kelt at his finest and
best. There in Ireland you got a strange mixture
of elementary early peoples, walled off from the
outer world by the four seas, and free to work out
their own racial amalgam on their own lines.
They brought with them at the outset a great in
heritance of Eastern mysticism. Others lost it, but
the Irish, all alone on their island, kept it alive and
brooded on it, and rooted their whole spiritual
side in it. Their religion is full of it ; their blood
is full of it ; our Celia is fuller of it than anybody
else. The Ireland of two thousand years ago is

416

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

incarnated in her. They are the merriest people and
the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile,
the most talented and the most unproductive, the
most practical and the most visionary, the most
devout and the most pagan. These impossible
contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood.
When I look at Celia, I seem to see in my mind's
eye the fair young ancestral mother of them all."

Theron gazed at the speaker with open admira
tion. " I love to hear you talk," he said simply.

An unbidden memory flitted upward in his
mind. Those were the very words that Alice had
so often on her lips in their old courtship days.
How curious it was ! He looked at the priest, and
had a quaint sensation of feeling as a romantic
woman must feel in the presence of a specially
impressive masculine personality. It was indeed
strange that this soft-voiced, portly creature in a
gown, with his white, fat hands and his feline suav
ity of manner, should produce such a commanding
and unique effect of virility. No doubt this was a
part of the great sex mystery which historically
surrounded the figure of the celibate priest as with
an atmosphere. Women had always been pros
trating themselves before it. Theron, watching his
companion's full, pallid face in the lamp-light, tried
to fancy himself in the priest's place, looking down
upon these worshipping female forms. He won
dered what the celibate's attitude really was. The
enigma fascinated him.

27 417

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Father Forbes, after his rhetorical outburst, had
been eating. He pushed aside his cheese-plate:
" I grow enthusiastic on the subject of my race
sometimes," he remarked, with the suggestion of
an apology. " But I make up for it other times —
most of the time — by scolding them. If it were
not such a noble thing to be an Irishman, it would
be ridiculous."

"Ah," said Theron, deprecatingly, "who would
not be enthusiastic in talking of Miss Madden?
What you said about her was perfect. As you
spoke, I was thinking how proud and thankful we
ought to be for the privilege of knowing her — we
who do know her well — although of course your
friendship with her is vastly more intimate than
mine — than mine could ever hope to be."

The priest offered no comment, and Theron
went on : "I hardly know how to describe the re
markable impression she makes upon me. I can't
imagine to myself any other young woman so bril
liant or broad in her views, or so courageous. Of
course, her being so rich makes it easier for her to
do just what she wants to do, but her bravery is
astonishing all the same. We had a long and very
sympathetic talk in the woods, that day of the pic
nic, after we left you. I don't know whether she
spoke to you about it? "

Father Forbes made a movement of the head
and eyes which seemed to negative the suggestion.

" Her talk," continued Theron, " gave me quite

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

new ideas of the range and capacity of the female
mind. I wonder that everybody in Octavius is n't
full of praise and admiration for her talents and
exceptional character. In such a small town as
this, you would think she would be the centre of
attention, — the pride of the place."

" I think she has as much praise as is good for
her," remarked the priest, quietly.

" And here 's a thing that puzzles me," pursued
Mr. Ware. " I was immensely surprised to find
that Dr. Ledsmar does n't even think she is smart,
— or at least he professes the utmost intellectual
contempt for her, and says he dislikes her into the
bargain. But of course she dislikes him, too, so
that 's only natural. But I can't understand his
denying her great ability."

The priest smiled in a dubious way. " Don't
borrow unnecessary alarm about that, Mr. Ware,"
he said, with studied smoothness of modulated
tones. "These two good friends of mine have
much enjoyment out of the idea that they are fight
ing for the mastery over my poor unstable character.
It has grown to be a habit with them, and a hobby
as well, and they pursue it with tireless zest. There
are not many intellectual diversions open to us
here, and they make the most of this one. It
amuses them, and it is not without its charms for
me, in my capacity as an interested observer. It
is a part of the game that they should pretend
to themselves that they detest each other. In

419

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

reality I fancy they like each other very much.
At any rate, there is nothing to be disturbed
about/'

His mellifluous tones had somehow the effect of
suggesting to Theron that he was an outsider and
would better mind his own business. Ah, if this
purring pussy-cat of a priest only knew how little
of an outsider he really was ! The thought gave
him an easy self-control.

" Of course," he said, " our warm mutual friend
ship makes the observation of these little individual
vagaries merely a part of a delightful whole. I
should not dream of discussing Miss Madden's con
fidences to me, or the doctor's either, outside our
own little group."

Father Forbes reached behind him and took
from a chair his black three-cornered cap with the
tassel. "Unfortunately I have a sick call waiting
me," he said, gathering up his gown and slowly
rising.

"Yes, I saw the man sitting in the hall," re
marked Theron, getting to his feet.

" I would ask you to go upstairs and wait," the
priest went on, " but my return, unhappily, is quite
uncertain. Another evening I may be more fortu
nate. I am leaving town to-morrow for some days,
but when I get back — "

The polite sentence did not complete itself.
Father Forbes had come out into the hall, giving a
cool nod to the working-man, who rose from the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

bench as they passed, and shook hands with his
guest on the doorstep.

When the door had closed upon Mr. Ware, the
priest turned to the man. " You have come about
those frames," he said. " If you will come upstairs,
I will show you the prints, and you can give me a
notion of what can be done with them. I rather
fancy the idea of a triptych in carved old English,
if you can manage it."

After the workman had gone away, Father Forbes
put on slippers and an old loose soutane, lighted a
cigar, and, pushing an easy-chair over to the reading
lamp, sat down with a book. Then something
occurred to him, and he touched the house-bell
at his elbow.

" Maggie," he said gently, when the housekeeper
appeared at the door, " I will have the coffee and
fine champagne up here, if it is no trouble. And —
oh, Maggie — I was compelled this evening to turn
the blameless visit of the framemaker into a venial
sin, and that involves a needless wear and tear of
conscience. I think that — hereafter — you under
stand ? — I am not invariably at home when the
Rev. Mr. W7are does me the honor to call."

421

CHAPTER XXVII

THAT night brought the first frost of the season
worth counting. In the morning, when Theron
came downstairs, his casual glance through the
window caught a desolate picture of blackened
dahlia stalks and shrivelled blooms. The gayety
and color of the garden were gone, and in their
place was shabby and dishevelled ruin. He flung
the sash up and leaned out. The nipping autumn
air was good to breathe. He looked about him,
surveying the havoc the frost had wrought among
the flowers, and smiled.

At breakfast he smiled again, — a mirthless and
calculated smile. " I see that Brother Gorringe's
flowers have come to grief over night," he re
marked.

Alice looked at him before she spoke, and saw
on his face a confirmation of the hostile hint in
his voice. She nodded in a constrained way, and
said nothing.

" Or rather, I should say," Theron went on,
with deliberate words, " the late Brother Gorringe's
flowers."

"How do you mean — latel" asked his wife,
swiftly.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"Oh, calm yourself!" replied the husband.
" He is not dead. He has only intimated to me
his desire to sever his connection. I may add
tha<; he did so in a highly offensive manner."

" I am very sorry," said Alice, in a low tone,
and with her eyes on her plate.

" I took it for granted you would be grieved at
his backsliding," remarked Theron, making his
phrases as pointed as he could. " He was such a
promising probationer, and you took such a keen
interest in his spiritual awakening. But the frost
has nipped his zeal, — along with the hundred or
more dollars' worth of flowers by which he testi
fied his faith. I find something interesting in their
having been blasted simultaneously."

Alice dropped all pretence of interest in her
breakfast. With a flushed face and lips tightly
compressed, she made a movement as if to rise
from her chair. Then, changing her mind, she
sat bolt upright and faced her husband.

" I think we had better have this out right
now," she said, in a voice which Theron hardly
recognized. " You have been hinting round the
subject long enough, — too long. There are some
things nobody is obliged to put up with, and this
is one of them. You will oblige me by saying out
in so many words what it is you are driving at."

The outburst astounded Theron. He laid down
his knife and fork, and gazed at his wife in frank
surprise. She had so accustomed him, of late, to

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

a demeanor almost abject in its depressed docility
that he had quite forgotten the Alice of the old
days, when she had spirit and courage enough for
two, and a notable tongue of her own. The flash
in her eyes and the lines of resolution about her
mouth and chin for a moment daunted him.
Then he observed by a flutter of the frill at her
wrist that she was trembling.

" I am sure I have nothing to ' say out in so
many words,' as you put it," he replied, forcing
his voice into cool, impassive tones. " I merely
commented upon a coincidence, that was all. If,
for any reason under the sun, the subject chances
to be unpleasant to you, I have no earthly desire
to pursue it."

" But I insist upon having it pursued ! " returned
Alice. " I Ve had just all I can stand of your
insinuations and innuendoes, and it 's high time we
had some plain talk. Ever since the revival, you
have been dropping sly, underhand hints about
Mr. Gorringe and — and me. Now I ask you
what you mean by it."

Yes, there was a shake in her voice, and he
could see how her bosom heaved in a tremor of
nervousness. It was easy for him to be very calm.

" It is you who introduce these astonishing
suggestions, not I," he replied coldly. " It is you
who couple your name with his, — somewhat to my
surprise, I admit, — but let me suggest that we
drop the subject. You are excited just now, and

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

you might say things that you would prefer to leave
unsaid. It would surely be better for all concerned
to say no more about it."

Alice, staring across the table at him with knitted
brows, emitted a sharp little snort of indignation.
" Well, I never ! Theron, I would n't have thought
it of you ! "

" There are so many things you would n't have
thought, on such a variety of subjects," he ob
served, with a show of resuming his breakfast.
" But why continue ? We are only angering each
other."

" Never mind that," she replied, with more con
trol over her speech. " I guess things have come
to a pass where a little anger won't do any harm.
I have a right to insist on knowing what you mean
by your insinuations."

Theron sighed. "Why will you keep harping
on the thing?" he asked wearily. "I have dis
played no curiosity. I don't ask for any explana
tions. I think I mentioned that the man had
behaved insultingly to me, — but that does n't
matter. I don't bring it up as a grievance. I
am very well able to take care of myself. I have
no wish to recur to the incident in any way. So
far as I am concerned, the topic is dismissed."

" Listen to me ! " broke in Alice, with eager
gravity. She hesitated, as he looked up with a
nod of attention, and reflected as well as she was
able among her thoughts for a minute or two.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"This is what I want to say to you. Ever since
we came to this hateful Octavius, you and I have
been drifting apart, — or no, that does n't express
it, — simply rushing away from each other. It
only began last spring, and now the space between
us is so wide that we are worse than complete
strangers. For strangers at least don't hate each
other, and I 've had a good many occasions lately
to see that you positively do hate me — "

" What grotesque absurdity ! " interposed Theron,
impatiently.

" No, it is n't absurdity ; it 's gospel truth," re
torted Alice. " And — don't interrupt me — there
have been times, too, when I have had to ask my
self if I was n't getting almost to hate you in return.
I tell you this frankly."

" Yes, you are undoubtedly frank," commented
the husband, toying with his teaspoon. " A hyper
critical person might consider, almost too frank."

Alice scanned his face closely while he spoke,
and held her breath as if in expectant suspense.
Her countenance clouded once more. " You don't
realize, Theron," she said gravely; "your voice
when you speak to me, your look, your manner,
they have all changed. You are like another man,
— some man who never loved me, and does n't
even know me, much less like me. I want to
know what the end of it is to be. Up to the time
of your sickness last summer, until after the
Soulsbys went away, I did n't let myself get down-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

right discouraged. It seemed too monstrous for
belief that you should go away out of my life like
that. It did n't seem possible that God could
allow such a thing. It came to me that I had
been lax in my Christian life, especially in my
position as a minister's wife, and that this was my
punishment. I went to the altar, to intercede with
Him, and to try to loose my burden at His feet.
But nothing has come of it. I got no help from
you."

"Really, Alice," broke in Theron, " I explained
over and over again to you how preoccupied I was
• — with the book — and affairs generally."

" I got no assistance from Heaven either," she
went on, declining the diversion he offered. " I
don't want to talk impiously, but if there is a God,
he has forgotten me, his poor heart-broken hand
maiden."

"You are talking impiously, Alice," observed
her husband. "And you are doing me cruel
injustice, into the bargain."

" I only wish I were ! " she replied \ " I only wish
to God I were ! "

" Well, then, accept my complete assurance that
you are, — that your whole conception of me, and
of what you are pleased to describe as my change
toward you, is an entire and utter mistake. Of
course, the married state is no more exempt from
the universal law of growth, development, alter
ation, than any other human institution. On its

427

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

spiritual side, of course, viewed either as a sacra
ment, or as — "

"Don't let us go into that," interposed Alice,
abruptly. " In fact, there is no good in talking
any more at all. It is as if we did n't speak the
same language. You don't understand what I
say ; it makes no impression upon your mind."

"Quite to the contrary," he assured her; "I
have been deeply interested and concerned in
all you have said. I think you are laboring
under a great delusion, and I have tried my
best to convince you of it ; but I have never
heard you speak more intelligibly or, I might say,
effectively."

A little gleam of softness stole over Alice's face.
" If you only gave me a little more credit for in
telligence," she said, "you would find that I am
not such a blockhead as you think I am."

" Come, come ! " he said, with a smiling show of
impatience. " You really must n't impute things
to me wholesale, like that."

She was glad to answer the smile in kind. " No ;
but truly," she pleaded, "you don't realize it, but
you have grown into a way of treating me as if I
had absolutely no mind at all."

" You have a very admirable mind," he re
sponded, and took up his teaspoon again. She
reached for his cup, and poured out hot coffee for
him. An almost cheerful spirit had suddenly
descended upon the breakfast table.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"And now let me say the thing I have been
aching to say for months," she began, in a less
burdened voice.

He lifted his brows. " Have n't things been
discussed pretty fully already? " he asked.

The doubtful, harassed expression clouded upon
her face at his words, and she paused. " No,"
she said resolutely, after an instant's reflection ;
" it is my duty to discuss this, too. It is a misun
derstanding all round. You remember that I told
you Mr. Gorringe had given me some plants, which
he got from some garden or other? "

" If you really wish to go on with the subject —
yes — I have a recollection of that particular false
hood of his."

" He did it with the kindest and friendliest
motives in the world ! " protested Alice. " He
saw how down-in-the-mouth and moping I was
here, among these strangers, — and I really was
getting quite peaked and run-down, — and he said
I stayed indoors too much, and it would do me all
sorts of good to work in the garden, and he would
send me some plants. The next I knew, here they
were, with a book about mixing soils and planting,
and so on. When I saw him next, and thanked
him, I suppose I showed some apprehension about
his having laid out money on them, and l)e, just to
ease my mind, invented the story about his getting
them for nothing. When I found out the truth —
I got it out of that boy, Harvey Semple — he ad-

429

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

mitted it quite frankly, — said he was wrong to
deceive me."

"This was in the fine first fervor of his term of
probation, I suppose," put in Theron. He made
no effort to dissemble the sneer in his voice.

" Well," answered Alice, with a touch of
acerbity, " I have told you now, and it is off my
mind. There never would have been the slightest
concealment about it, if you had n't begun by
keeping me at arm's length, and making it next
door to impossible to speak to you at all, and
if—"

" And if he had n't lied." Theron, as he finished
her sentence for her, rose from the table. Dallying
for a brief moment by his chair, there seemed the
magnetic premonition in the air of some further
and kindlier word. Then he turned and walked
sedately into the next room, and closed the door
behind him. The talk was finished ; and Alice, left
alone, passed the knuckle of her thumb over one
swimming eye and then the other, and bit her
lips and swallowed down the sob that rose in
her throat.

430

CHAPTER XXVIII

IT was early afternoon when Theron walked out
of his yard, bestowing no glance upon the withered
and tarnished show of the garden, and started with
a definite step down the street. The tendency to
ruminative loitering, which those who saw him
abroad always associated with his tall, spare figure,
was not suggested to-day. He moved forward
like a man with a purpose.

All the forenoon in the seclusion of the sitting-
room, with a book opened before him, he had
been thinking hard. It was not the talk with
Alice that occupied his thoughts. That rose in
his mind from time to time, only as a disagreeable
blur, and he refused to dwell upon it. It was
nothing to him, he said to himself, what Gorringe's
motives in lying had been. As for Alice, he hard
ened his heart against her. Just now it was her
mood to try and make up to him. But it had
been something different yesterday, and who could
say what it would be to-morrow? He really had
passed the limit of patience with her shifting
emotional vagaries, now lurching in this direction,
now in that. She had had her chance to main-

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

tain a hold upon his interest and imagination, and
had let it slip. These were the accidents of life,
the inevitable harsh happenings in the great tragedy
of Nature. They could not be helped, and there
was nothing more to be said.

He had bestowed much more attention upon
what the priest had said the previous evening. He
passed in review all the glowing tributes Father
Forbes had paid to Celia. They warmed his
senses as he recalled them, but they also, in a
curious, indefinite way, caused him uneasiness.
There had been a personal fervor about them
which was something more than priestly. He
remembered how the priest had turned pale and
faltered when the question whether Celia would
escape the general doom of her family came up.
It was not a merely pastoral agitation that, he felt
sure.

A hundred obscure hints, doubts, stray little
suspicions, crowded upward together in his thoughts.
It became apparent to him now that from the out
set he had been conscious of something queer, —
yes, from that very first day when he saw the
priest and Celia together, and noted their glance
of recognition inside the house of death. He
realized now, upon reflection, that the tone of
other people, his own parishioners and his casual
acquaintances in Octavius alike, had always had
a certain note of reservation in it when it touched
upon Miss Madden. Her running in and out of

43 2

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

the pastorate at all hours, the way the priest patted
her on the shoulder before others, the obvious
dislike the priest's ugly old housekeeper bore her,
the astonishing freedom of their talk with each
other, — these dark memories loomed forth out of
a mass of sinister conjecture.

He could bear the uncertainty no longer. Was
it indeed not entirely his own fault that it had
existed thus long? No man with the spirit of a
mouse would have shilly-shallied in this preposter
ous fashion, week after week, with the fever of a
beautiful woman's kiss in his blood, and the woman
herself living only round the corner. The whole
world had been as good as offered to him, — a
bewildering world of wealth and beauty and spirit
ual exaltation and love, — and he, like a weak fool,
had waited for it to be brought to him on a salver,
as it were, and actually forced upon his acceptance !
" That is my failing," he reflected ; " these miser
able ecclesiastical bandages of mine have dwarfed
my manly side. The meanest of Thurston's clerks
would have shown a more adventurous spirit and
a bolder nerve. If I do not act at once, with
courage and resolution, everything will be lost.
Already she must think me unworthy of the honor
it was in her sweet will to bestowl" Then he
remembered that she was now always at home.
" Not another hour of foolish indecision ! " he
whispered to himself. " I will put my destiny to
the test. I will see her to-day ! "
*8 433

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

A middle-aged, plain-faced servant answered his
ring at the door-bell of the Madden mansion. She
was palpably Irish, and looked at him with a
saddened preoccupation in her gray eyes, holding
the door only a little ajar.

Theron had got out one of his cards. " I wish
to make inquiry about young Mr. Madden, — Mr.
Michael Madden," he said, holding the card forth
tentatively. " I have only just heard of his illness,
and it has been a great grief to me."

" He is no better," answered the woman, briefly.

" I am the Rev. Mr. Ware," he went on, " and
you may say that, if he is well enough, I should be
glad to see him."

The servant peered out at him with a suddenly
altered expression, then shook her head. " I don't
think he would be wishing to see you" she replied.
It was evident from her tone that she suspected
the visitor's intentions.

Theron smiled in spite of himself. " I have not
come as a clergyman," he explained, " but as a
friend of the family. If you will tell Miss Madden
that I am here, it will do just as well. Yes, we
won't bother him. If you will kindly hand my
card to his sister."

When the domestic turned at this and went in,
Theron felt like throwing his hat in the air, there
where he stood. The woman's churlish sectarian
prejudices had played ideally into his hands. In
no other imaginable way could he have asked for

434

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Celia so naturally. He wondered a little that a
servant at such a grand house as this should leave
callers standing on the doorstep. Still more he
wondered what he should say to the lady of his
dreams when he came into her presence.

" Will you please to walk this way ? " The
woman had returned. She closed the door noise
lessly behind him, and led the way, not up the sump
tuous staircase, as Theron had expected, but along
through the broad hall, past several large doors, to
a small curtained archway at the end. She pushed
aside this curtain, and Theron found himself in a
sort of conservatory, full of the hot, vague light
of sunshine falling through ground-glass. The air
was moist and close, and heavy with the smell of
verdure and wet earth. A tall bank of palms,
with ferns sprawling at their base, reared itself
directly in front of him. The floor was of mosaic,
and he saw now that there were rugs upon it,
and that there were chairs and sofas, and other
signs of habitation. It was, indeed, only half a
greenhouse, for the lower part of it was in rose
wood panels, with floral paintings on them, like
a room

Moving to one side of the barrier of palms, he
discovered, to his great surprise, the figure of
Michael, sitting propped up with pillows in a huge
easy-chair. The sick man was looking at him
with big, gravely intent eyes. His face did not
show as much change as Theron had in fancy

435

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

pictured. It had seemed almost as bony and
cadaverous on the day of the picnic. The hands
spread out on the chair-arms were very white and
thin, though, and the gaze in the blue eyes had a
spectral quality which disturbed him.

Michael raised his right hand, and Theron, step
ping forward, took it limply in his for an instant.
Then he laid it down again. The touch of people
about to die had always been repugnant to him.
He could feel on his own warm palm the very
damp of the grave.

" I only heard from Father Forbes last evening
of your — your ill-health," he said, somewhat
hesitatingly. He seated himself on a bench
beneath the palms, facing the invalid, but still
holding his hat. " I hope very sincerely that you
will soon be all right again."

" My sister is lying down in her room," answered
Michael. He had not once taken his sombre and
embarrassing gaze from the other's face. The
voice in which he uttered this uncalled-for remark
was thin in fibre, cold and impassive. It fell upon
Theron's ears with a suggestion of hidden meaning.
He looked uneasily into Michael's eyes, and then
away again. They seemed to be looking straight
through him, and there was no shirking the sensa
tion that they saw and comprehended things with
an unnatural prescience.

"I hope she is feeling better," Theron found
himself saying. " Father Forbes mentioned that

436

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

she was a little under the weather. I dined with
him last night."

"I am giad that you came," said Michael, after
a little pause. His earnest, unblinking eyes seemed
to supplement his tongue with speech of their own.
" I do be thinking a great deal about you. I have
matters to speak of to you, now that you are
here."

Theron bowed his head gently, in token of
grateful attention. He tried the experiment of
looking away from Michael, but his glance went
back again irresistibly, and fastened itself upon the
sick man's gaze, and clung there.

" I am next door to a dead man," he went on,
paying no heed to the other's deprecatory gesture.
" It is not years or months with me, but weeks.
Then I go away to stand up for judgment on my
sins, and if it is His merciful will, I shall see God.
So I say my good-byes now, and so you will let me
speak plainly, and not think ill of what I say. You
are much changed, Mr. Ware, since you came to
Octavius, and it is not a change for the good."

Theron lifted his brows in unaffected surprise,
and put inquiry into his glance.

" I don't know if Protestants will be saved, in
God's good time, or not," continued Michael.
" I find there are different opinions among the
clergy about that, and of course it is not for me,
only a plain mechanic, to be sure where learned
and pious scholars are in doubt. But I am sure

437

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

about one thing. Those Protestants, and others
too, mind you, who profess and preach good
deeds, and themselves do bad deeds, — they will
never be saved. They will have no chance at
all to escape hell-fire."

" I think we are all agreed upon that, Mr.
Madden," said Theron, with surface suavity.

"Then I say to you, Mr. Ware, you are your
self in a bad path. Take the warning of a dying
man, sir, and turn from it ! "

The impulse to smile tugged at Theron' s facial
muscles. This was really too droll. He looked
up at the ceiling, the while he forced his counte
nance into a polite composure, then turned again
to Michael, with some conciliatory commonplace
ready for utterance. But he said nothing, and all
suggestion of levity left his mind, under the search
ing inspection bent upon him by the young man's
hollow eyes. What did Michael suspect? What
did he know? What was he hinting at, in this
strange talk of his ?

" I saw you often on the street when first you
came here," continued Michael. " I knew the man
who was here before you, — that is, by sight, —
and he was not a good man. But your face, when
you came, pleased me. I liked to look at you.
I was tormented just then, do you see, that so
many decent, kindly people, old school-mates and
friends and neighbors of mine, — and, for that
matter, others all over the country — must lose

438

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

their souls because they were Protestants. All my
boyhood and young manhood, that thought took
the joy out of me. Sometimes I use n't to sleep
a whole night long, for thinking that some lad I
had been playing with, perhaps in his own house,
that very day, would be taken when he died, and
his mother too, when she died, and thrown into
the flames of hell for all eternity. It made me
so unhappy that finally I would n't go to any
Protestant boy's house, and have his mother be
nice to me, and give me cake and apples, — and me
thinking all the while that they were bound to be
damned, no matter how good they were to me."

The primitive humanity of this touched Theron,
and he nodded approbation with a tender smile in
his eyes, forgetting for the moment that a per
sonal application of the monologue had been
hinted at.

" But then later, as I grew up," the sick man
went on, " I learned that it was not altogether
certain. Some of the authorities, I found, main
tained that it was doubtful, and some said openly
that there must be salvation possible for good
people who lived in ignorance of the truth
through no fault of their own. Then I had hope
one day, and no hope the next, and as I did my
work I thought it over, and in the evenings my
father and I talked it over, and we settled nothing
of it at all. Of course, how could we ? "

" Did you ever discuss the question with your

439

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

sister? " it occurred suddenly to Theron to inter
pose. He was conscious of some daring in doing
so, and he fancied that Michael's drawn face
clouded a little at his words.

" My sister is no theologian," he answered
briefly. " Women have no call to meddle with such
matters. But I was saying — it was in the middle
of these doubtings of mine that you came here to
Octavius, and I noticed you on the streets, and
once in the evening — I made no secret of it to
my people — I sat in the back of your church and
heard you preach. As I say, I liked you. It was
your face, and what I thought it showed of the
man underneath it, that helped settle my mind
more than anything else. I said to myself:
' Here is a young man, only about my own age,
and he has education and talents, and he does not
seek to make money for himself, or a great name,
but he is content to live humbly on the salary of a
book-keeper, and devote all his time to prayer and
the meditation of his religion, and preaching, and
visiting the sick and the poor, and comforting
them. His very face is a pleasure and a help for
those in suffering and trouble to look at. The
very sight of it makes one believe in pure thoughts
and merciful deeds. I will not credit it that God
intends damning such a man as that, or any like
him ! ' "

Theron bowed, with a slow, hesitating gravity of
manner, and deep, not wholly complacent, attention

440

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

on his face. Evidently all this was by way of prep
aration for something unpleasant.

"That was only last spring," said Michael. His
tired voice sank for a sentence or two into a medi
tative half-whisper. "And it was my last spring of
all. I shall not be growing weak any more, or
drawing hard breaths, when the first warm weather
comes. It will be one season to me hereafter, al
ways the same." He lifted his voice with percep
tible effort. " I am talking too much. The rest I
can say in a word. Only half a year has gone by,
and you have another face on you entirely. I had
noticed the small changes before, one by one. I
saw the great change, all of a sudden, the day of
the picnic. I see it a hundred times more now, as
you sit there. If it seemed to me like the face of
a saint before, it is more like the face of a bar
keeper now ! "

This was quite too much. Theron rose, flushed
to the temples, and scowled down at the helpless
man in the chair. He swallowed the sharp words
which came uppermost, and bit and moistened his
lips as he forced himself to remember that this was
a dying man, and Celia's brother, to whom she was
devoted, and whom he himself felt he wanted to be
very fond of. He got the shadow of a smile on to
his countenance.

" I fear you have tired yourself unduly," he said,
in as non-contentious a tone as he could manage.
He even contrived a little deprecatory laugh. " I

441

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

am afraid your real quarrel is with the air of Octa-
vius. It agrees with me so wonderfully, — I am
getting as fat as a seal. But I do hope I am not
paying for it by such a wholesale deterioration in
side. If my own opinion could be of any value, I
should assure you that I feel myself an infinitely
better and broader and stronger man than I was
when I came here."

Michael shook his head dogmatically. " That is
the greatest pity of all," he said, with renewed earn
estness. " You are entirely deceived about your
self. You do not at all realize how you have altered
your direction, or where you are going. It was a
great misfortune for you, sir, that you did not keep
among your own people. That poor half-brother
of mine, though the drink was in him when he said
that same to you, never spoke a truer word. Keep
among your own people, Mr. Ware ! When you go
among others — you know what I mean — you have
no proper understanding of what their sayings and
doings really mean. You do not realize that they
are held up by the power of the true Church, as a
little child learning to walk is held up with a belt
by its nurse. They can say and do things, and no
harm at all come to them, which would mean de
struction to you, because they have help, and you
are walking alone. And so be said by me, Mr.
Ware ! Go back to the way you were brought up
in, and leave alone the people whose ways are
different from yours. You are a married man, and

442

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

you are the preacher of a religion, such as it is.
There can be nothing better for you than to go and
strive to be a good husband, and to set a good
example to the people of your Church, who look up
to you — and mix yourself up no more with outside
people and outside notions that only do you mis
chief. And that is what I wanted to say to you."

Theron took up his hat. " I take in all kindness
what you have felt it your duty to say to me, Mr.
Madden," he said. " I am not sure that I have
altogether followed you, but I am very sure you
mean it well."

" I mean well by you," replied Michael, wearily
moving his head on the pillow, and speaking in an
undertone of languor and pain, " and I mean well
by others, that are nearer to me, and that I have a
right to care more about. When a man lies by the
side of his open grave, he does not be meaning ill
to any human soul."

" Yes — thanks — quite so ! " faltered Theron.
He dallied for an instant with the temptation to
seek some further explanation, but the sight of
Michael's half- closed eyes and worn-out expression
decided him against it. It did not seem to be
expected, either, that he should shake hands, and
with a few perfunctory words of hope for the in
valid's recovery, which fell with a jarring note of
falsehood upon his own ears, he turned and left the
room. As he did so, Michael touched a bell on
the table beside him.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Theron drew a long breath in the hall, as the
curtain fell behind him. It was an immense relief
to escape from the oppressive humidity and heat of
the flower-room, and from that ridiculous bore of
a Michael as well.

The middle-aged, grave-faced servant, warned by
the bell, stood waiting to conduct him to the door.

" I am sorry to have missed Miss Madden," he
said to her. " She must be quite worn out. Per
haps later in the day — "

" She will not be seeing anybody to-day," re
turned the woman. " She is going to New York
this evening, and she is taking some rest against
the journey."

" Will she be away long?" he asked mechani
cally. The servant's answer, " I have no idea,"
hardly penetrated his consciousness at all.

He moved down the steps, and along the gravel
to the street, in a maze of mental confusion. When
he reached the sidewalk, under the familiar elms,
he paused, and made a definite effort to pull his
thoughts together, and take stock of what had
happened, of what was going to happen ; but the
thing baffled him. It was as if some drug had
stupefied his faculties.

He began to walk, and gradually saw that what
he was thinking about was the fact of Celia's de
parture for New York that evening. He stared at
this fact, at first in its nakedness, then clothed with
reassuring suggestions that this was no doubt a trip

444

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

she very often made. There was a blind sense of
comfort in this idea, and he rested himself upon it.
Yes, of course, she travelled a great deal. New
York must be as familiar to her as Octavius was to
him. Her going there now was quite a matter of
course, — the most natural thing in the world.

Then there burst suddenly uppermost in his
mind the other fact, — that Father Forbes was also
going to New York that evening. The two things
spindled upward, side by side, yet separately, in his
mental vision ; then they twisted and twined
themselves together. He followed their convolu
tions miserably, walking as if his eyes were shut.

In slow fashion matters defined and arranged
themselves before him. The process of tracing
their sequence was all torture, but there was no
possibility, no notion, of shirking any detail of the
pain. The priest had spoken of his efforts to per
suade Celia to go away for a few days, for rest and
change of air and scene. He must have known
only too well that she was going, but of that he
had been careful to drop no hint. The possibility
of accident was too slight to be worth considering.
People on such intimate terms as Celia and the
priest — people with such facilities for seeing each
other whenever they desired — did not find them
selves on the same train of cars, with the same
long journey in view, by mere chance.

Theron walked until dusk began to close in
upon the autumn day. It grew colder, as he

445

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

turned his face homeward. He wondered if it
would freeze again over-night, and then remem
bered the shrivelled flowers in his wife's garden.
For a moment they shaped themselves in a picture
before his mind's eye ; he saw their blackened
foliage, their sicklied, drooping stalks, and wilted
blooms, and as he looked, they restored themselves
to the vigor and grace and richness of color of
summer-time, as vividly as if they had been painted
on a canvas. Or no, the picture he stared at was
not on canvas, but on the glossy, varnished panel
of a luxurious sleeping-car. He shook his head
angrily and blinked his eyes again and again, to
prevent their seeing, seated together in the open
window above this panel, the two people he knew
were there, gloved and habited for the night's
journey, waiting for the train to start.

• •••»•••

"Very much to my surprise," he found himself
saying to Alice, watching her nervously as she laid
the supper-table, " I find I must go to Albany to
night. That is, it isn't absolutely necessary, for
that matter, but I think it may easily turn out to
be greatly to my advantage to go. Something has
arisen — I can't speak about it as yet — but the
sooner I see the Bishop about it the better.
Things like that occur in a man's life, where
boldly striking out a line of action, and following
it up without an instant's delay, may make all
the difference in the world to him. To-morrow

446

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

it might be too late ; and, besides, I can be home
the sooner again."

Alice's face showed surprise, but no trace of
suspicion. She spoke with studied amiability dur
ing the meal, and deferred with such unexpected
tact to his implied desire not to be questioned as
to the mysterious motives of the journey, that his
mood instinctively softened and warmed toward
her, as they finished supper.

He smiled a little. " I do hope I sha'n't have
to go on to-morrow to New York; but these
Bishops of ours are such gad-abouts one never
knows where to catch them. As like as not
Sanderson may be down in New York, on Book-
Concern business or something ; and if he is, I
shall have to chase him up. But, after all, perhaps
the trip will do me good, — the change of air and
scene, you know."

" I 'm sure I hope so," said Alice, honestly
enough. " If you do go on to New York, I sup
pose you '11 go by the river- boat. Everybody talks
so much of that beautiful sail down the Hudson."

"That 's an idea ! " exclaimed Theron, welcom
ing it with enthusiasm. " It had n't occurred to
me. If I do have to go, and it is as lovely as they
make out, the next time I promise I won't go with
out you, my girl. I have been rather out of sorts
lately," he continued. "When I come back, I
daresay I shall be feeling better, more like my old
self. Then I 'm going to try, Alice, to be nicer to

447

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

you than I have been of late. I 'm afraid there
was only too much truth in what you said this
morning."

" Never mind what I said this morning — or any
other time," broke in Alice, softly. " Don't ever
remember it again, Theron, if only — only — "

He rose as she spoke, moved round the table to
where she sat, and, bending over her, stopped the
faltering sentence with a kiss. When was it, he
wondered, that he had last kissed her? It seemed
years, ages, ago.

An hour later, with hat and overcoat on, and his
valise in his hand, he stood on the doorstep of the
parsonage, and kissed her once more before he
turned and descended into the darkness. He felt
like whistling as his feet sounded firmly on the
plank sidewalk beyond the gate. It seemed as if
he had never been in such capital good spirits
before in his life.

448

CHAPTER XXIX

THE train was at a standstill somewhere, and the
dull, ashen beginnings of daylight had made a first
feeble start toward effacing the lamps in the car-roof,
when the new day opened for Theron. A man who
had just come in stopped at the seat upon which he
had been stretched through the night, and, tapping
him brusquely on the knee, said, " I 'm afraid I
must trouble you, sir." After a moment of sleep-
burdened confusion, he sat up, and the man took
the other half of the seat and opened a newspaper,
still damp from the press. It was morning, then.

Theron rubbed a clear space upon the clouded
window with his thumb, and looked out. There
was nothing to be seen but a broad stretch of
tracks, and beyond this the shadowed outlines of
wagons and machinery in a yard, with a back
ground of factory buildings.

The atmosphere in the car was vile beyond
belief. He thought of opening the window, but
feared that the peremptory-looking man with the
paper, who had wakened him and made him sit
up, might object. They were the only people in
the car who were sitting up. Backwards and for
wards, on either side of the narrow aisle, the dim
29 449

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

light disclosed recumbent forms, curled uncomfort
ably into corners, or sprawling at difficult angles
which involved the least interference with one
another. Here and there an upturned face gave a
livid patch of surface for the mingled play of the
gray dawn and the yellow lamp -light. A ceaseless
noise of snoring was in the air.

He got up and walked to the tank of ice-water
at the end of the aisle, and took a drink from the
most inaccessible portion of the common tin-cup's
rim. The happy idea of going out on the platform
struck him, and he acted upon it. The morning
air was deliciously cool and fresh by contrast, and
he filled his lungs with it again and again. Stand
ing here, he could discern beyond the buildings to
the right the faint purplish outlines of great
rounded hills. Some workmen, one of them bear
ing a torch, were crouching along under the side
of the train, pounding upon the resonant wheels
with small hammers. He recalled having heard
the same sound in the watches of the night, during
a prolonged halt. Some one had said it was Al
bany. He smiled in spite of himself at the thought
that Bishop Sanderson would never know about
the visit he had missed.

Swinging himself to the ground, he bent side-
wise and looked forward down the long train.
There were five, six, perhaps more, sleeping-cars
on in front. Which one of them, he wondered —
and then there came the sharp " All aboard ! "

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

from the other side, and he bundled up the steps
again, and entered the car as the train slowly
resumed its progress.

He was wide-awake now, and quite at his ease.
He took his seat, and diverted himself by winking
gravely at a little child facing him on the next seat
but one. There were four other children in the
family party, encamped about the tired and still
sleeping mother whose back was turned to Theron.
He recalled now having noticed this poor woman
last night, in the first stage of his journey, — how she
fed her brood from one of the numerous baskets
piled under their feet, and brought water in a tin
dish of her own from the tank to use in washing
their faces with a rag, and loosened their clothes
to dispose them for the night's sleep. The face of
the woman, her manner and slatternly aspect, and
the general effect of her belongings, bespoke
squalid ignorance and poverty. Watching her,
Theron had felt curiously interested in the per
formance. In one sense, it was scarcely more
human than the spectacle of a cat licking her
kittens, or a cow giving suck to her calf. Yet,
in another, was there anything more human?

The child who had wakened before the rest re
garded him with placidity, declining to be amused
by his winkings, but exhibiting no other emotion.
She had been playing by herself with a couple of
buttons tied on a string, and after giving a civil
amount of attention to Theron's grimaces, she

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

turned again to the superior attractions of this toy.
Her self-possession, her capacity for self-entertain
ment, the care she took not to arouse the others,
all impressed him very much. He felt in his
pocket for a small coin, and, reaching forward,
offered it to her. She took it calmly, bestowed a
tranquil gaze upon him for a moment, and went
back to the buttons. Her indifference produced
an unpleasant sensation upon him somehow, and
he rubbed the steaming window clear again, and
stared out of it.

The wide river lay before him, flanked by a pre
cipitous wall of cliffs which he knew instantly must
be the Palisades. There was an advertisement
painted on them which he tried in vain to read.
He was surprised to find they interested him so
slightly. He had heard all his life of the Hudson,
and especially of it just at this point. The reality
seemed to him almost commonplace. His failure
to be thrilled depressed him for the moment.

"I suppose those are the Palisades? " he asked
his neighbor.

The man glanced up from his paper, nodded,
and made as if to resume his reading. But his
eye had caught something in the prospect through
the window which arrested his attention. "By
George ! " he exclaimed, and lifted himself to get
a clearer view.

"What is it?" asked Theron, peering forth as
well.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" Nothing ; only Barclay Wendover's yacht is
still there. There 's been a hitch of some sort.
They were to have left yesterday."

"Is that it, — that long black thing? " queried
Theron. "That can't be a yacht, can it? "

"What do you think it is?" answered the
other. They were looking at a slim, narrow hull,
lying at anchor, silent and motionless on the drab
expanse of water. " If that ain't a yacht, they
have n't begun building any yet. They 're taking
her over to the Mediterranean for a cruise, you
know, — around India and Japan for the winter,
and home by the South Sea islands. Friend o'
mine 's in the party. Wouldn't mind the trip
myself."

" But do you mean to say," asked Theron,
"that that little shell of a thing can sail across
the ocean? Why, how many people would she
hold?"

The man laughed. " Well," he said, " there 's
room for two sets of quadrilles in the chief saloon,
if the rest keep their legs well up on the sofas.
But there 's only ten or a dozen in the party this
time. More than that rather get in one another's
way, especially with so many ladies on board."

Theron asked no more questions, but bent his
head to see the last of this wonderful craft. The
sight of it, and what he had heard about it, sud
denly gave point and focus to his thoughts. He
knew at last what it was that had lurked, formless

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

and undesignated, these many days in the back
ground of his dreams. The picture rose in his
mind now of Celia as the mistress of a yacht.
He could see her reclining in a low easy-chair
upon the polished deck, with the big white sails
billowing behind her, and the sun shining upon
the deep blue waves, and glistening through the
splash of spray in the air, and weaving a halo
of glowing gold about her fair head. Ah, how
the tender visions crowded now upon him !
Eternal summer basked round this enchanted yacht
of his fancy, — summer sought now in Scottish
firths or Norwegian fiords, now in quaint old
Southern harbors, ablaze with the hues of strange
costumes and half-tropical flowers and fruits, now
in far-away Oriental bays and lagoons, or among
the coral reefs and palm-trees of the luxurious
Pacific. He dwelt upon these new imaginings with
the fervent longing of an inland-born boy. Every
vague yearning he had ever felt toward salt-water
stirred again in his blood at the thought of the
sea — with Celia.

Why not? She had never visited any foreign
land. " Sometime," she had said, " sometime, no
doubt I will." He could hear again the wistful,
musing tone of her voice. The thought had fas
cinations for her, it was clear. How irresistibly
would it not appeal to her, presented with the
added charm of a roving, vagrant independence
on the high seas, free to speed in her snow-winged

454

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

chariot wherever she willed over the deep, loitering
in this place, or up-helm-and-away to another, with
no more care or weight of responsibility than the
gulls tossing through the air in her wake !

Theron felt, rather than phrased to himself, that
there would not be " ten or a dozen in the party"
on that yacht. Without defining anything in his
mind, he breathed in fancy the same bold ocean
breeze which filled the sails, and toyed with Celia's
hair ; he looked with her as she sat by the rail,
and saw the same waves racing past, the same vast
dome of cloud and ether that were mirrored in
her brown eyes, and there was no one else any
where near them. Even the men in sailors'
clothes, who would be pulling at ropes, or climbing
up tarred ladders, kept themselves considerately
outside the picture. Only Celia sat there, and at
her feet, gazing up again into her face as in the
forest, the man whose whole being had been
consecrated to her service, her worship, by the
kiss.

" You Ve passed it now. I was trying to point
out the Jumel house to you, — where Aaron Burr
lived, you know."

Theron roused himself from his day-dream, and
nodded with a confused smile at his neighbor.
" Thanks," he faltered ; " I didn't hear you. The
train makes such a noise, and I must have been
dozing."

He looked about him. The night aspect, as of

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

a tramps' lodging-house, had quite disappeared
from the car. Everybody was sitting up ; and the
more impatient were beginning to collect their
bundles and hand-bags from the racks and floor.
An expressman came through, jangling a huge
bunch of brass checks on leathern thongs over his
arm, and held parley with passengers along the
aisle. Outside, citified streets, with stores and
factories, were alternating in the moving panorama
with open fields ; and, even as he looked, these
vacant spaces ceased altogether, and successive
regular lines of pavement, between two tall rows of
houses all alike, began to stretch out, wheel to the
right, and swing off out of view, for all the world
like the avenues of hop-poles he remembered as a
boy. Then was a long tunnel, its darkness broken
at stated intervals by brief bursts of daylight from
overhead, and out of this all at once the train
drew up its full length in some vast, vaguely lighted
enclosure, and stopped.

" Yes, this is New York," said the man, folding
up his paper, and springing to his feet. The
narrow aisle was filled with many others who had
been prompter still ; and Theron stood, bag in
hand, waiting till this energetic throng should have
pushed itself bodily past him forth from the car.
Then he himself made his way out, drifting with
a sense of helplessness in their resolute wake.
There rose in his mind the sudden conviction that
he would be too late. All the passengers in the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

forward sleepers would be gone before he could
get there. Yet even this terror gave him no new
power to get ahead of anybody else in the tightly
packed throng.

Once on the broad platform, the others started
off briskly ; they all seemed to know just where
they wanted to go, and to feel that no instant of
time was to be lost in getting there. Theron
himself caught some of this urgent spirit, and
hurled himself along in the throng with reckless
haste, knocking his bag against peoples' legs, but
never pausing for apology or comment until he
found himself abreast of the locomotive at the
head of the train. He drew aside from the main
current here, and began searching the platform,
far and near, for those he had travelled so far
to find.

The platform emptied itself. Theron lingered
on in puzzled hesitation, and looked about him.
In the whole immense station, with its acres of
tracks and footways, and its incessantly shifting
processions of people, there was visible nobody
else who seemed also in doubt, or who appeared
capable of sympathizing with indecision in any
form. Another train came in, some way over to
the right, and before it had fairly stopped, swarms
of eager men began boiling out of each end of
each car, literally precipitating themselves over one
another, it seemed to Theron, in their excited
dash down the steps. As they caught their foot-

457

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ing below, they started racing pell-mell down the
platform to its end ; there he saw them, looking
more than ever like clustered bees in the dis
tance, struggling vehemently in a dense mass up a
staircase in the remote corner of the building.

"What are those folks running for? Is there a
fire?" he asked an amiable-faced young mulatto,
in the uniform of the sleeping-car service, who
passed him with some light hand-bags.

" No ; they 's Harlem people, I guess — jes'
catchin' the Elevated — that 's all, sir," he an
swered obligingly.

At the moment some passengers emerged slowly
from one of the sleeping-cars, and came loitering
toward him.

"Why, are there people still in these cars?" he
asked eagerly. " Have n't they all gone ? "

" Some has ; some ain't," the porter replied.
" They most generally take their time about it.
They ain't no hurry, so long 's they get out 'fore
we 're drawn round to the drill-yard."

There was still hope, then. Theron took up
his bag and walked forward, intent upon finding
some place from which he could watch unobserved
the belated stragglers issuing from the sleeping-
cars. He started back all at once, confronted by
a semi-circle of violent men with whips and
badges, who stunned his hearing by a sudden vocif
erous outburst of shouts and yells. They made
furious gestures at him with their whips and fists,

458

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

to enforce the incoherent babel of their voices ;
and in these gestures, as in their faces and cries,
there seemed a great deal of menace and very
little invitation. There was a big policeman
sauntering near by, and Theron got the idea that
it was his presence alone which protected him from
open violence at the hands of these savage hack-
men. He tightened his clutch on his valise, and,
turning his back on them and their uproar, tried
to brave it out and stand where he was. But the
policeman came lounging slowly toward him, with
such authority in his swaying gait, and such urban
omniscience written all over his broad, sandy face,
that he lost heart, and beat an abrupt retreat off to
the right, where there were a number of doorways,
near which other people had ventured to put down
baggage on the floor.

Here, somewhat screened from observation, he
stood for a long time, watching at odd moments
the ceaselessly varying phases of the strange scene
about him, but always keeping an eye on the train
he had himself arrived in. It was slow and dis
piriting work. A dozen times his heart failed him,
and he said to himself mournfully that he had had
his journey for nothing. Then some new figure
would appear, alighting from the steps of a sleeper,
and hope revived in his breast.

At last, when over half an hour of expectancy
had been marked off by the big clock overhead,
his suspense came to an end. He saw Father

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Forbes' erect and substantial form, standing on the
car platform nearest of all, balancing himself with
his white hands on the rails, waiting for something.
Then after a little he came down, followed by a
black porter, whose arms were burdened by nu
merous bags and parcels. The two stood a minute
or so more in hesitation at the side of the steps.
Then Celia descended, and the three advanced.

The importance of not being discovered was
uppermost in Theron's mind, now that he saw
them actually coming toward him. He had avoided
this the previous evening, in the Octavius depot,
with some skill, he flattered himself. It gave him
a pleasurable sense of being a man of affairs,
almost a detective, to be confronted by the neces
sity now of baffling observation once again. He
was still rather without plans for keeping them in
view, once they left the station. He had supposed
that he would be able to hear what hotel they di
rected their driver to take them to, and, failing
that, he had fostered a notion, based upon a story
he had read when a boy, of throwing himself into
another carriage, and bidding his driver to pursue
them in hot haste, and on his life not fail to
track them down. These devices seemed some
what empty, now that the urgent moment was at
hand j and as he drew back behind some other
loiterers, out of view, he sharply racked his wits
for some way of coping with this most pressing
problem.

460

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

It turned out, however, that there was no diffi
culty at all. Father Forbes and Celia seemed to
have no use for the hackmen, but moved straight
forward toward the street, through the doorway
next to that in which Theron cowered. He stole
round, and followed them at a safe distance, mak
ing Celia's hat, and the portmanteau perched on
the shoulder of the porter behind her, his guides.
To his surprise, they still kept on their course
when they had reached the sidewalk, and went over
the pavement across an open square which spread
itself directly in front of the station. Hanging as
far behind as he dared, he saw them pass to the
other sidewalk diagonally opposite, proceed for a
block or so along this, and then separate at a cor
ner. Celia and the negro lad went down a side
street, and entered the door of a vast, tall red
brick building which occupied the whole block.
The priest, turning on his heel, came back again
and went boldly up the broad steps of the front
entrance to this same structure, which Theron now
discovered to be the Murray Hill Hotel.

Fortune had indeed favored him. He not only
knew where they were, but he had been himself a
witness to the furtive way in which they entered
the house by different doors. Nothing in his own
limited experience of hotels helped him to com
prehend the notion of a separate entrance for
ladies and their luggage. He did not feel quite
sure about the significance of what he had observed,

461

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

in his own mind. But it was apparent to him
that there was something underhanded about it.

After lingering awhile on the steps of the hotel,
and satisfying himself by peeps through the glass
doors that the coast was clear, he ventured inside.
The great corridor contained many people, coming,
going, or standing about, but none of them paid
any attention to him. At last he made up his
mind, and beckoned a colored boy to him from a
group gathered in the shadows of the big central
staircase. Explaining that he did not at that mo
ment wish a room, but desired to leave his bag, the
boy took him to a cloak-room, and got him a check
for the thing. With this in his pocket he felt
himself more at his ease, and turned to walk
away. Then suddenly he wheeled, and, bend
ing his body over the counter of the cloak-room,
astonished the attendant inside by the eager
ness with which he scrutinized the piled rows of
portmanteaus, trunks, overcoats, and bundles in
the little enclosure.

" What is it you want ? Here 's your bag, if
you 're looking for that," this man said to him.

"No, thanks; it's nothing," replied Theron,
straightening himself again. He had had a narrow
escape. Father Forbes and Celia, walking side by
side, had come down the small passage in which
he stood, and had passed him so closely that he
had felt her dress brush against him. Fortunately
he had seen them in time, and by throwing himself

462

half into the cloak-room, had rendered recognition
impossible.

He walked now in the direction they had taken,
till he came to the polite colored man at an open
door on. the left, who was bowing people into the
breakfast room. Standing in the doorway, he
looked about him till his eye lighted upon his two
friends, seated at a small table by a distant window,
with a black waiter, card in hand, bending over in
consultation with them.

Returning to the corridor, he made bold now to
march up to the desk and examine the register.
The priest's name was not there. He found only
the brief entry, " Miss Madden, Octavius," written,
not by her, but by Father Forbes. On the line
were two numbers in pencil, with an " and " be
tween them. An indirect question to one of the
clerks helped him to an explanation of this. When
there were two numbers, it meant that the guest in
question had a parlor as well as a bedroom.

Here he drew a long, satisfied breath, and
turned away. The first half of his quest stood
completed, — and that much more fully and easily
than he had dared to hope. He could not but
feel a certain new respect for himself as a man of
resource and energy. He had demonstrated that
people could not fool with him with impunity.

It remained to decide what he would do with
his discovery, now that it had been so satisfactorily
made. As yet, he had given this hardly a thought.

463

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Even now, it did not thrust itself forward as a
thing demanding instant attention. It was much
more important, first of all, to get a good break
fast. He had learned that there was another and
less formal eating-place, downstairs in the base
ment by the bar, with an entrance from the street.
He walked down by the inner stairway instead,
feeling himself already at home in the big hotel.
He ordered an ample breakfast, and came out
while it was being served to wash and have his
boots blacked, and he gave the man a quarter of a
dollar. His pockets were filled with silver quarters,
half-dollars, and dollars almost to a burdensome
point, and in his valise was a bag full of smaller
change, including many rolls of copper cents
which Alice always counted and packed up on
Mondays. In the hurry of leaving he had brought
with him the church collections for the past two
weeks. It occurred to him that he must keep a
strict account of his expenditure. Meanwhile he
gave ten cents to another man in a silk- sleeved
cardigan jacket, who had merely stood by and
looked at him while his boots were being polished.
There was a sense of metropolitan affluence in the
very atmosphere.

The little table in the adjoining room, on which
Theron found his meal in waiting for him, seemed
a vision of delicate napery and refined appoint
ments in his eyes. He was wolfishly hungry, and
the dishes he looked upon gave him back assur-

464

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ances by sight and smell that he was very happy
as well. The servant in attendance had an ex
tremely white apron and a kindly black face. He
bowed when Theron looked at him, with the air
of a lifelong admirer and humble friend.

" I suppose you '11 have claret with your break
fast, sir?" he remarked, as if it were a matter of
course.

"Why, certainly," answered Theron, stretching
his legs contentedly under the table, and tucking
the corner of his napkin in his neckband. — " cer
tainly, my good man."

3° 465

CHAPTER XXX

AT ten o'clock Theron, loitering near the book
stall in the corridor, saw Father Forbes come
downstairs, pass out through the big front doors,
get into a carriage, and drive away.

This relieved him of a certain sense of respon
sibility, and he retired to a corner sofa and sat
down. The detective side of him being off duty,
so to speak, there was leisure at last for reflection
upon the other aspects of his mission. Yes ; it was
high time for him to consider what he should do
next.

It was easier to recognize this fact, however,
than to act upon it. His mind was full of tricksy
devices for eluding this task of serious thought
which he sought to impose upon it. It seemed so
much pleasanter not to think at all — but just to
drift. He found himself watching with envy the
men who, as they came out from their breakfast,
walked over to the bookstall, and bought cigars
from the row of boxes nestling there among the
newspaper piles. They had such evident delight
in the work of selection ; they took off the ends of
the cigars so carefully, and lighted them with such

466

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

meditative attention, — he could see that he was
wofully handicapped by not knowing how to smoke.
He had had the most wonderful breakfast of his
life, but even in the consciousness of comfortable
repletion which pervaded his being, there was an
obstinate sense of something lacking. No doubt
a good cigar was the thing needed to round out
the perfection of such a breakfast. He half
rose once, fired by a sudden resolution to go over
and get one. But of course that was nonsense ; it
would only make him sick. He sat down, and
determinedly set himself to thinking.

The effort finally brought fruit — and of a kind
which gave him a very unhappy quarter of an
hour. The lover part of him was uppermost now,
insistently exposing all its raw surfaces to the stings
and scalds of jealousy. Up to this moment, his
brain had always evaded the direct question of
how he and the priest relatively stood in Celia's
estimation. It forced itself remorselessly upon
him now; and his thoughts, so far from shirking
the subject, seemed to rise up to meet it. It was
extremely unpleasant, all this.

But then a calmer view asserted itself. Why go
out of his way to invent anguish for himself? The
relations between Celia and the priest, whatever
they might be, were certainly of old standing.
They had begun before his time. His own
romance was a more recent affair, and must take
its place, of course, subject to existing conditions.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

It was all right for him to come to New York, and
satisfy his legitimate curiosity as to the exact
character and scope of these conditions. But it
was foolish to pretend to be amazed or dismayed
at the discovery of their existence. They were a
part of the situation which he, with his eyes wide
open, had accepted. It was his function to
triumph over them, to supplant them, to rear the
edifice of his own victorious passion upon their
ruins. It was to this that Celia's kiss had invited
him. It was for this that he had come to New
York. To let his purpose be hampered or
thwarted now by childish doubts and jealousies
would be ridiculous.

He rose, and holding himself very erect, walked
with measured deliberation across the corridor and
up the broad staircase. There was an elevator
near at hand, he had noticed, but he preferred the
stairs. One or two of the colored boys clustered
about the foot of the stairs looked at him, and he
had a moment of dreadful apprehension lest they
should stop his progress. Nothing was said, and
he went on. The numbers on the first floor were
not what he wanted, and after some wandering
about he ascended to the next, and then to the
third. Every now and then he encountered at
tendants, but intuitively he bore himself with an
air of knowing what he was about which protected
him from inquiry.

Finally he came upon the hall-way he sought.
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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Passing along, he found the doors bearing the
numbers he had memorized so well. They were
quite close together, and there was nothing to help
him guess which belonged to the parlor. He hesi
tated, gazing wistfully from one to the other. In
the instant of indecision, even while his alert ear
caught the sound of feet coming along toward the
passage in which he stood, a thought came to
quicken his resolve. It became apparent to him
that his discovery gave him a certain new measure
of freedom with Celia, a sort of right to take things
more for granted than heretofore. He chose a door
at random, and rapped distinctly on the panel.

" Come ! "

The voice he knew for Celia's. The single word,
however, recalled the usage of Father Forbes, which
he had noted more than once at the pastorate,
when Maggie had knocked.

He straightened his shoulders, took his hat off,
and pushed open the door. It was the parlor, —
a room of sofas, pianos, big easy-chairs, and luxuri
ous bric-a-brac. A tall woman was walking up and
down in it, with bowed head. Her back was at
the moment toward him ; and he looked at her,
saying to himself that this was the lady of his
dreams, the enchantress of the kiss, the woman
who loved him — but somehow it did not seem to
his senses to be Celia.

She turned, and moved a step or two in his di
rection before she mechanically lifted her eyes, and

469

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

saw who was standing in her doorway. She stopped
short, and regarded him. Her face was in the
shadow, and he could make out nothing of its
expression, save that there was a general effect
of gravity about it.

" I cannot receive you," she said. "You must
go away. You have no business to come like this
without sending up your card."

Theron smiled at her. The notion of taking in
earnest her inhospitable words did not at all occur
to him. He could see now that her face had vexed
and saddened lines upon it, and the sharpness of
her tone remained in his ears. But he smiled again
gently, to reassure her.

" I ought to have sent up my name, I know," he
said, " but I could n't bear to wait. I just saw
your name on the register, and — you will forgive
me, won't you? — I ran to you at once. I know
you won't have the heart to send me away ! "

She stood where she had halted, her arms behind
her, looking him fixedly in the face. He had made
a movement to advance, and offer his hand in
greeting, but her posture checked the impulse.
His courage began to falter under her inspection.

"Must I really go down again?" he pleaded.
" It 's a crushing penalty to suffer for such a little
indiscretion. I was so excited to find you were
here — I never stopped to think. Don't send me
away ; please don't ! "

Celia raised her head. " Well, shut the door,

47°

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARK

then," she said, " since you are so anxious to stay.
You would have done much better, though, very
much better indeed, to have taken the hint and
gone away."

"Will you shake hands with me, Celia?" he
asked softly, as he came near her.

" Sit there, please ! " she made answer, indicating
a chair in the middle of the room. He obeyed
her, but to his surprise, instead of seating herself
as well, she began walking up and down the length
of the floor again. After a turn or two she stopped
in front of him, and looked him full in the eye.
The light from the windows was on her countenance
now, and its revelations vaguely troubled him. It
was a Celia he had never seen before who con
fronted him.

" I am much occupied by other matters," she
said, speaking with cold impassivity, " but still I
find myself curious to know just what limits you set
to your dishonesty."

Theron stared up at her. His lips quivered, but
no speech came to them. If this was all merely
fond playfulness, it was being carried to a heart-
aching point.

" I saw you hiding about in the depot at home
last evening," she went on. " You come up here,
pretending to have discovered me by accident, but
I saw you following me from the Grand Central
this morning."

"Yes, I did both these things," said Theron,

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

boldly. A fine bravery tingled in his veins all at
once. He looked into her face and found the
spirit to disregard its frowning aspect. " Yes, I
did them," he repeated defiantly. " That is not
the hundredth part, or the thousandth part, of what
I would do for your sake. I have got way beyond
caring for any consequences. Position, reputation,
the good opinion of fools, — what are they ? Life
itself, — what does it amount to ? Nothing at all —
with you in the balance ! "

"Yes — but I am not in the balance," observed
Celia, quietly. " That is where you have made
your mistake."

Theron laid aside his hat. Women were curious
creatures, he reflected. Some were susceptible to
one line of treatment, some to another. His own
reading of Celia had always been that she liked
opposition, of a smart, rattling, almost cheeky, sort.
One got on best with her by saying bright things.
He searched his brain now for some clever quip
that would strike sparks from the adamantine mood
which for the moment it was her whim to assume.
To cover the process, he smiled a little. Then her
beauty, as she stood before him, her queenly form
clad in a more stiffly fashionable dress than he had
seen her wearing before, appealed afresh and over
whelmingly to him. He rose to his feet.

" Have you forgotten our talk in the woods ? "
he murmured with a wooing note. " Have you
forgotten the kiss ? ' '

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She shook her head calmly. " I have forgotten
nothing."

" Then why play with me so cruelly now ? " he
went on, in a voice of tender deprecation. " I know
you don't mean it, but all the same it bruises my
heart a little. I build myself so wholly upon you,
I have made existence itself depend so completely
upon your smile, upon a soft glance in your eyes,
that when they are not there, why, I suffer, I don't
know how to live at all. So be kinder to me,
Celia ! "

" I was kinder, as you call it, when you came
in," she replied. " I told you to go away. That
was pure kindness, — more kindness than you
deserved."

Theron looked at his hat, where it stood on the
carpet by his feet. He felt tears coming into his
eyes. " You tell me that you remember," he said,
in depressed tones, "and yet you treat me like
this ! Perhaps I am wrong. No doubt it is my
own fault. I suppose I ought not to have come
down here at all."

Celia nodded her head in assent to this view.

" But I swear that I was helpless in the matter,"
he burst forth. " I had to come ! It would have
been literally impossible for me to have stayed at
home, knowing that you were here, and knowing
also that — that — "

" Go on ! " said Celia, thrusting forth her under-
lip a trifle, and hardening still further the gleam in

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her eye, as he stumbled over his sentence and
left it unfinished. " What was the other thing that
you were ' knowing ' ? "

" Knowing, — "he took up the word hesitat
ingly, — " knowing that life would be insupportable
to me if I could not be near you."

She curled her lip at him. " You skated over
the thin spot very well," she commented. " It
was on the tip of your tongue to mention the fact
that Father Forbes came with me. Oh, I can
read you through and through, Mr. Ware."

In a misty way Theron felt things slipping from
his grasp. The rising moisture blurred his eyes as
their gaze clung to Celia.

"Then if you do read me," he protested, "you
must know how utterly my heart and brain are
filled with you. No other man in all the world
can yield himself so absolutely to the woman he
worships as I can. You have taken possession of
me so wholly, I am not in the least master of
myself any more. I don't know what I say or
what I do. I am not worthy of you, I know. No
man alive could be that. But no one else will
idolize and reverence you as I do. Believe me
when I say that, Celia ! And how can you blame
me, in your heart, for following you? Whither
thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I
will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and
thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to

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me, and more also, if aught but death part thee
and me ! "

Celia shrugged her shoulders, and moved a few
steps away from him. Something like despair
seized upon him.

"Surely," he urged with passion, — "surely I
have a right to remind you of the kiss ! "

She turned. " The kiss," she said meditatively.
" Yes, you have a right to remind me of it. Oh,
yes, an undoubted right. You have another right
too, — the right to have the kiss explained to you.
It was of the good-bye order. It signified that we
were n't to meet again, and that just for one little
moment I permitted myself to be sorry for you.
That was all."

He held himself erect under the incredible
words, and gazed blankly at her. The magnitude
of what he confronted bewildered him ; his mind
was incapable of taking it in. " You mean — "he
started to say, and then stopped, helplessly staring
into her face, with a dropped jaw. It was too
much to try to think what she meant.

A little side-thought sprouted in the confusion
of his brain. It grew until it spread a bitter
smile over his pale face. " I know so little about
kisses," he said ; " I am such a greenhorn at that
sort of thing. You should have had pity on my
inexperience, and told me just what brand of kiss
it was I was getting. Probably I ought to have
been able to distinguish, but you see I was brought

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

up in the country — on a farm. They don't have
kisses in assorted varieties there."

She bowed her head slightly. "Yes, you are
entitled to say that," she assented. " I was to
blame, and it is quite fair that you should tell me
so. You spoke of your inexperience, your inno
cence. That was why I kissed you in saying
good-bye. It was in memory of that innocence of
yours, to which you yourself had been busy saying
good-bye ever since I first saw you. The idea
seemed to me to mean something at the moment.
I see now that it was too subtle. I do not usually
err on that side."

Theron kept his hold upon her gaze, as if it
afforded him bodily support. He felt that he
ought to stoop and take up his hat, but he dared
not look away from her. " Do you not err now,
on the side of cruelty? " he asked her piteously.

It seemed for the instant as if she were waver
ing, and he swiftly thrust forth other pleas. " I
admit that I did wrong to follow you to New York.
I see that now. But it was an offence committed
in entire good faith. Think of it, Celia ! I have
never seen you since that day, — that day in the
woods. I have waited — and waited — with no
sign from you, no chance of seeing you at all.
Think what that meant to me ! Everything in the
world had been altered for me, torn up by the
roots. I was a new being, plunged into a new
existence. The kiss had done that. But until I

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saw you again, I could not tell whether this vast
change in me and my life was for good or for bad,
— whether the kiss had come to me as a blessing
or a curse. The suspense was killing me, Celia !
That is why, when I learned that you were coming
here, I threw everything to the winds and followed
you. You blame me for it, and I bow my head
and accept the blame. But are you justified in
punishing me so terribly, — in going on after
I have confessed my error, and cutting my
heart into little strips, putting me to death by
torture?"

" Sit down," said Celia, with a softened weari
ness in her voice. She seated herself in front of
him as he sank into his chair again. " I don't
want to give you unnecessary pain, but you have
insisted on forcing yourself into a position where
there isn't anything else but pain. I warned you
to go away, but you wouldn't. No matter how
gently I may try to explain things to you, you are
bound to get nothing but suffering out of the
explanation. Now shall I still go on ? "

He inclined his head in token of assent, and
did not lift it again, but raised toward her a dis
consolate gaze from a pallid, drooping face.

" It is all in a single word, Mr. Ware," she pro
ceeded, in low tones. " I speak for others as well
as myself, mind you, — we find that you are a
bore."

Theron's stiffened countenance remained im-

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movable. He continued to stare unblinkingly up
into her eyes.

" We were disposed to like you very much when
we first knew you," Celia went on. "You im
pressed us as an innocent, simple, genuine young
character, full of mother's milk. It was like the
smell of early spring in the country to come in
contact with you. Your honesty of nature, your
sincerity in that absurd religion of yours, your
general naivete of mental and spiritual get-up, all
pleased us a great deal. We thought you were
going to be a real acquisition."

"Just a moment — whom do you mean by
'we'?" He asked the question calmly enough,
but in a voice with an effect of distance in it.

" It may not be necessary to enter into that,"
she replied. " Let me go on. But then it became
apparent, little by little, that we had misjudged
you. We liked you, as I have said, because you
were unsophisticated and delightfully fresh and
natural. Somehow we took it for granted you
would stay so. But that is just what you did n't
do, — just what you had n't the sense to try to do.
Instead, we found you inflating yourself with all
sorts of egotisms and vanities. We found you
presuming upon the friendships which had been
mistakenly extended to you. Do you want in
stances? You went to Dr. Ledsmar's house that
very day after I had been with you to get a piano
at Thurston's, and tried to inveigle him into

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

talking scandal about me. You came to me with
tales about him. You went to Father Forbes, and
sought to get him to gossip about us both. Neither
of those men will ever ask you inside his house
again. But that is only one part of it. Your
whole mind became an unpleasant thing to con
template. You thought it would amuse and im
press us to hear you ridiculing and reviling the
people of your church, whose money supports you,
and making a mock of the things they believe in,
and which you for your life would n't dare let them
know you didn't believe in. You talked to us
slightingly about your wife. What were you think
ing of, not to comprehend that that would disgust
us? You showed me once — do you remember?

— a life of George Sand that you had just bought,

— bought because you had just discovered that
she had an unclean side to her life. You chuckled
as you spoke to me about it, and you were for
all the world like a little nasty boy, giggling over
something dirty that older people had learned not
to notice. These are merely random incidents.
They are just samples, picked hap-hazard, of the
things in you which have been opening our eyes,
little by little, to our mistake. I can understand
that all the while you really fancied that you were
expanding, growing, in all directions. What you
took to be improvement was degeneration. When
you thought that you were impressing us most by
your smart sayings and doings, you were remind-

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ing us most of the fable about the donkey trying
to play lap-dog. And it was n't even an honest,
straightforward donkey at that ! "

She uttered these last words sorrowfully, her
hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes sinking to
the floor. A silence ensued. Then Theron
reached a groping hand out for his hat, and, rising,
walked with a lifeless, automatic step to the door.

He had it half open, when the impossibility of
leaving in this way towered suddenly in his path
and overwhelmed him. He slammed the door to,
and turned as if he had been whirled round by
some mighty wind. He came toward her, with
something almost menacing in the vigor of his
movements, and in the wild look upon his white,
set face. Halting before her, he covered the
tailor-clad figure, the coiled red hair, the upturned
face with its simulated calm, the big brown eyes,
the rings upon the clasped fingers, with a sweeping,
comprehensive glare of passion.

" This is what you have done to me, then ! "

His voice was unrecognizable in his own ears, —
hoarse and broken, but with a fright-compelling
something in it which stimulated his rage. The
horrible notion of killing her, there where she sat,
spread over the chaos of his mind with an effect
of unearthly light, — red and abnormally evil. It
was like that first devilish radiance ushering in
Creation, of which the first-fruit was Cain. Why
should he not kill her? In all ages, women had

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been slain for less. Yes, — and men had been
hanged. Something rose and stuck in his dry
throat ; and as he swallowed it down, the sinister
flare of murderous fascination died suddenly away
into darkness. The world was all black again, —
plunged in the Egyptian night which lay upon the
face of the deep while the earth was yet without
form and void. He was alone on it, — alone
among awful, planetary solitudes which crushed
him.

The sight of Celia, sitting motionless only a
pace in front of him, was plain enough to his eyes.
It was an illusion. She was really a star, many
millions of miles away. These things were hard to
understand ; but they were true, none the less.
People seemed to be about him, but in fact he
was alone. He recalled that even the little child
in the car, playing with those two buttons on a
string, would have nothing to do with him. Take
his money, yes ; take all he would give her — but
not smile at him, not come within reach of him !
Men closed the doors of their houses against him.
The universe held him at arm's length as a
nuisance.

He was standing with one knee upon a sofa.
Unconsciously he had moved round to the side of
Celia j and as he caught the effect of her face now
in profile, memory-pictures began all at once
building themselves in his brain, — pictures of her
standing in the darkened room of the cottage of
31 481

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

death, declaiming the Confiteor ; of her seated at
the piano, under the pure, mellowed candle-light ;
of her leaning her chin on her hands, and gazing
meditatively at the leafy background of the woods
they were in ; of her lying back, indolently content,
in the deck-chair on the yacht of his fancy, — that
yacht which a few hours before had seemed so
brilliantly and bewitchingly real to him, and now
• — now — !

He sank in a heap upon the couch, and, bury
ing his face among its cushions, wept and groaned
aloud. His collapse was absolute. He sobbed
with the abandonment of one who, in the veritable
presence of death, lets go all sense of relation to life.

Presently some one was touching him on the
shoulder, — an incisive, pointed touch, — and he
checked himself, and lifted his face.

"You will have to get up, and present some
sort of an appearance, and go away at once,"
Celia said to him in low, rapid tones. " Some
gentlemen are at the door, whom I have been
waiting for."

As he stupidly sat up and tried to collect his
faculties, Celia had opened the door and admitted
two visitors. The foremost was Father Forbes;
and he, with some whispered, smiling words, pre
sented to her his companion, a tall, robust, florid
man of middle-age, with a frock-coat and a gray
mustache, sharply waxed. The three spoke for
a moment together. Then the priest's wandering

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

eye suddenly lighted upon the figure on the sofa.
He stared, knitted his brows, and then lifted them
in inquiry as he turned to Celia.

"Poor man!" she said readily, in tones loud
enough to reach Theron. " It is our neighbor,
Father, the Rev. Mr. Ware. He hit upon my
name in the register quite unexpectedly, and I
had him come up. He is in sore distress, — a
great and sudden bereavement. He is going now.
Won't you speak to him in the hall, — a few words,
Father? It would please him. He is terribly
depressed."

The words had drawn Theron to his feet, as by
some mechanical process. He took up his hat
and moved dumbly to the door. It seemed to
him that Celia intended offering to shake hands ;
but he went past her with only some confused
exchange of glances and a murmured word or
two. The tall stranger, who drew aside to let him
pass, had acted as if he expected to be introduced.
Theron, emerging into the hall, leaned against the
wall and looked dreamily at the priest, who had
stepped out with him.

" I am very sorry to learn that you are in
trouble, Mr. Ware," Father Forbes said, gently
enough, but in hurried tones. " Miss Madden is
also in trouble. I mentioned to you that her
brother had got into a serious scrape. I have
brought my old friend, General Brady, to consult
with her about the matter. He knows all the

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

parties concerned, and he can set things right if
anybody can."

" It 's a mistake about me, — I 'm not in any
trouble at all," said Theron. " I just dropped in
to make a friendly call."

The priest glanced sharply at him, noting with
a swift, informed scrutiny how he sprawled against
the wall, and what vacuity his eyes and loosened
lips expressed.

"Then you have a talent for the inopportune
amounting to positive genius," said Father Forbes,
with a stormy smile.

"Tell me this, Father Forbes," the other de
manded, with impulsive suddenness, '" is it true
that you don't want me in your house again? Is
that the truth or not?"

"The truth is always relative, Mr. Ware,"
replied the priest, turning away, and closing the
door of the parlor behind him with a decisive
sound.

Left alone, Theron started to make his way
downstairs. He found his legs wavering under
him and making zigzag movements of their own
in a bewildering fashion. He referred this at first,
in an outburst of fresh despair, to the effects of
his great grief. Then, as he held tight to the
banister and governed his descent step by step, it
occurred to him that it must be the wine he had
had for breakfast. Upon examination, he was not
so unhappy, after all.

484

CHAPTER XXXI

AT the second peal of the door-bell, Brother
Soulsby sat up in bed. It was still pitch-dark, and
the memory of the first ringing fluttered musically
in his awakening consciousness as a part of some
dream he had been having.

"Who the deuce can that be? " he mused aloud,
in querulous resentment at the interruption.

" Put your head out of the window, and ask,"
suggested his wife, drowsily.

The bell-pull scraped violently in its socket, and
a third outburst of shrill reverberations clamored
through the silent house.

" Whatever you do, I 'd do it before he yanked
the whole thing to pieces," added the wife, with
more decision.

Brother Soulsby was wide awake now. He
sprang to the floor, and, groping about in the
obscurity, began drawing on some of his clothes.
He rapped on the window during the process, to
show that the house was astir, and a minute after
ward made his way out of the room and down the
stairs, the boards creaking under his stockinged
feet as he went.

485

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Nearly a quarter of an hour passed before he
returned. Sister Soulsby, lying in sleepy quies
cence, heard vague sounds of voices at the front
door, and did not feel interested enough to lift her
head and listen. A noise of footsteps on the side
walk followed, first receding from the door, then
turning toward it, this second time marking the
presence of more than one person. There seemed
in this the implication of a guest, and she shook
off the dozing impulses which enveloped her facul
ties, and waited to hear more. There came up,
after further muttering of male voices, the unde
niable chink of coins striking against one another.
Then more footsteps, the resonant slam of a car
riage door out in the street, the grinding of wheels
turning on the frosty road, and the racket of a
vehicle and horses going off at a smart pace into
the night. Somebody had come, then. She
yawned at the thought, but remained well awake,
tracing idly in her mind, as various slight sounds
rose from the lower floor, the different things
Soulsby was probably doing. Their spare room
was down there, directly underneath, but curiously
enough no one seemed to enter it. The faint
murmur of conversation which from time to time
reached her came from the parlor instead. At
last she heard her husband's soft tread coming up
the staircase, and still there had been no hint of
employing the guest-chamber. What could he be
about? she wondered.

486

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Brother Soulsby came in, bearing a small lamp
in his hand, the reddish light of which, flaring up
ward, revealed an unlooked-for display of amuse
ment on his thin, beardless face. He advanced to
the bedside, shading the glare from her blinking
eyes with his palm, and grinned.

" A thousand guesses, old lady," he said, with a
dry chuckle, " and you would n't have a ghost of
a chance. You might guess till Hades froze over
seven feet thick, and still you would n't hit it."

She sat up in turn. " Good gracious, man,"
she began, " you don't mean — " Here the cheer
ful gleam in his small eyes reassured her, and she
sighed relief, then smiled confusedly. " I half
thought, just for the minute," she explained, "it
might be some bounder who 'd come East to try
and blackmail me. But no, who is it — and what
on earth have you done with him? "

Brother Soulsby cackled in merriment. " It 's
Brother Ware of Octavius, out on a little bat, all
by himself. He says he 's been on the loose only
two days ; but it looks more like a fortnight."

" Our Brother Ware ? " she regarded him with
open-eyed surprise.

" Well, yes, I suppose he 's our Brother Ware, —
some," returned Soulsby, genially. " He seems to
think so, anyway."

" But tell me about it ! " she urged eagerly.
"What's the matter with him? How does he
explain it?"

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

"Well, he explains it pretty badly, if you ask
me/' said Soulsby, with a droll, joking eye and a
mock-serious voice. He seated himself on the
side of the bed, facing her, and still considerately
shielding her from the light of the lamp he held.
"But don't think I suggested any explanations.
I Ve been a mother myself. He 's merely filled
himself up to the neck with rum, in the simple,
ordinary, good old-fashioned way. That 's all.
What is there to explain about that?"

She looked meditatively at him for a time,
shaking her head. "No, Soulsby," she said
gravely, at last. " This is n't any laughing matter.
You may be sure something bad has happened, to
set him off like that. I 'm going to get up and
dress right now. What time is it?"

" Now don't you do anything of the sort," he
urged persuasively. " It is n't five o'clock ; it '11 be
dark for nearly an hour yet. Just you turn over,
and have another nap. He 's all right. I put him
on the sofa, with the buffalo robe round him. You '11
find him there, safe and sound, when it 's time for
white folks to get up. You know how it breaks
you up all day, not to get your full sleep."

" I don't care if it makes me look as old as the
everlasting hills," she said. "Can't you under
stand, Soulsby ? The thing worries me, — gets on
my nerves. I couldn't close an eye, if I tried.
I took a great fancy to that young man. I told
you so at the time."

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Soulsby nodded, and turned down the wick of
his lamp a trifle. "Yes, I know you did," he
remarked in placidly non-contentious tones. " I
can't say I saw much in him myself, but I daresay
you 're right." There followed a moment's silence,
during which he experimented in turning the wick
up again. "But, anyway," he went on, "there
is n't anything you can do. He '11 sleep it off, and
the longer he 's left alone the better. It is n't as
if we had a hired girl, who 'd come down and find
him there, and give the whole thing away. He 's
fixed up there perfectly comfortable ; and when
he 's had his sleep out, and wakes up on his own
account, he '11 be feeling a heap better."

The argument might have carried conviction,
but on the instant the sound of footsteps came to
them from the room below. The subdued noise
rose regularly, as cf one pacing to and fro.

" No, Soulsby, you come back to bed, and get
your sleep out. I'm going downstairs. It's no
good talking ; I 'm going."

Brother Soulsby offered no further opposition,
either by talk or demeanor, but returned con
tentedly to bed, pulling the comforter over his
ears, and falling into the slow, measured respiration
of tranquil slumber before his wife was ready to
leave the room.

The dim, cold gray of twilight was sifting fur
tively through the lace curtains of the front windows
when Mrs. Soulsby, lamp in hand, entered the

489

parlor. She confronted a figure she would have
hardly recognized. The man seemed to have
been submerged in a bath of disgrace. From the
crown of his head to the soles of his feet, every
thing about him was altered, distorted, smeared
with an intangible effect of shame. In the vague
gloom of the middle distance, between lamp and
window, she noticed that his shoulders were
crouched, like those of some shambling tramp.
The frowsy shadows of a stubble beard lay on his
jaw and throat. His clothes were crumpled and
hung awry; his boots were stained with mud.
The silk hat on the piano told its battered story
with dumb eloquence.

Lifting the lamp, she moved forward a step,
and threw its light upon his face. A little groan
sounded involuntarily upon her lips. Out of a
mask of unpleasant features, swollen with drink
and weighted by the physical craving for rest and
sleep, there stared at her two bloodshot eyes,
shining with the wild light of hysteria. The effect
of dishevelled hair, relaxed muscles, and rough,
half-bearded lower face lent to these eyes, as she
caught their first glance, an unnatural glare. The
lamp shook in her hand for an instant. Then,
ashamed of herself, she held out her other hand
fearlessly to him.

"Tell me all about it, Theron," she said calmly,
and with a soothing, motherly intonation in her
voice.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

He did not take the hand she offered, but
suddenly, with a wailing moan, cast himself on his
knees at her feet. He was so tall a man that the
movement could have no grace. He abased his
head awkwardly, to bury it among the folds of the
skirts at her ankles. She stood still for a moment,
looking down upon him. Then, blowing out the
light, she reached over and set the smoking lamp
on the piano near by. The daylight made things
distinguishable in a wan, uncertain way, throughout
the room.

" I have come out of hell, for the sake of hearing
some human being speak to me like that ! "

The thick utterance proceeded in a muffled
fashion from where his face grovelled against her
dress. Its despairing accents appealed to her, but
even more was she touched by the ungainly figure
he made, sprawling on the carpet.

"Well, since you are out, stay out," she an
swered, as reassuringly as she could. " But get
up and take a seat here beside me, like a
sensible man, and tell me all about it. Come !
I insist ! "

In obedience to her tone, and the sharp tug at
his shoulder with which she emphasized it, he got
slowly to his feet, and listlessly seated himself on
the sofa to which she pointed. He hung his head,
and began catching his breath with a periodical
gasp, half hiccough, half sob.

" First of all," she said, in her brisk, matter

491

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

of-fact manner, " don't you want to lie down there
again, and have me tuck you up snug with the
buffalo robe, and go to sleep ? That would be the
best thing you could do."

He shook his head disconsolately, from side to
side. " I can't ! " he groaned, with a swifter re
currence of the sob-like convulsions. " I 'm dying
for sleep, but I 'm too — too frightened ! "

" Come, I '11 sit beside you till you drop off," she
said, with masterful decision. He suffered himself
to be pushed into recumbency on the couch, and
put his head with docility on the pillow she brought
from the spare room. When she had spread the
fur over him, and pushed her chair close to the
sofa, she stood by it for a little, looking down in
meditation at his demoralized face. Under the
painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued
debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments
of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had
seen a few months before. Nothing essential had
been taken away. There was only this pestiferous
overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed.
The face underneath was still all right.

With a soft, maternal touch, she smoothed the
hair from his forehead into order. Then she
seated herself, and, when he got his hand out from
under the robe and thrust it forth timidly, she
took it in hers and held it in a warm, sympathetic
grasp. He closed his eyes at this, and gradually
the paroxysmal catch in his breathing lapsed.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

The daylight strengthened, until at last tiny flecks
of sunshine twinkled in the meshes of the further
curtains at the window. She fancied him asleep,
and gently sought to disengage her hand, but his
fingers clutched at it with vehemence, and his
eyes were wide open.

" I can't sleep at all," he murmured. "I want
to talk."

" There 's nothing in the world to hinder you,"
she commented smilingly.

"I tell you the solemn truth," he said, lift
ing his voice in dogged assertion : " the best ser
mon I ever preached in my life, I preached only
three weeks ago, at the camp-meeting. It was
admitted by everybody to be far and away my
finest effort ! They will tell you the same ! "

"It's quite likely," assented Sister Soulsby.
" I quite believe it."

" Then how can anybody say that I Ve degen
erated, that I Ve become a fool? " he demanded.

" I have n't heard anybody hint at such a
thing," she answered quietly.

" No, of course, you have n't heard them ! " he
cried, "/heard them, though !" Then, forcing
himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint
of her hand, he flung back the covering. " I 'm
burning hot already ! Yes, those were the identi
cal words : I have n't improved ; I Ve degen
erated. People hate me ; they won't have me in
their houses. They say I 'm a nuisance and a bore.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

I 'm like a little nasty boy. That 's what they say.
Even a young man who was dying — lying right
on the edge of his open grave — told me solemnly
that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was
only fit for a barkeeper now. They say I really
don't know anything at all. And I 'm not only a
fool, they say, I 'm a dishonest fool into the
bargain ! "

" But who says such twaddle as that? " she re
turned consolingly. The violence of his emotion
disturbed her. " You must n't imagine such
things. You are among friends here. Other
people are your friends, too. They have the very
highest opinion of you."

" I have n't a friend on earth but you ! " he
declared solemnly. His eyes glowed fiercely, and
his voice sank into a grave intensity of tone. " I
was going to kill myself. I went on to the big
bridge to throw myself off, and a policeman saw
me trying to climb over the railing, and he grabbed
me and marched me away. Then he threw me
out at the entrance, and said he would club my
head off if I came there again. And then I went
and stood and let the cable-cars pass close by me,
and twenty times I thought I had the nerve to
throw myself under the next one, and then I waited
for the next — and — I was afraid ! And then I
was in a crowd somewhere, and the warning came
to me that I was going to die. The fool need n't
go kill himself: God would take care of that. It

494

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

was my heart, you know. I Ve had that terrible
fluttering once before. It seized me this time,
and I fell down in the crowd, and some people
walked over me, but some one else helped me up,
and let me sit down in a big lighted hallway, the
entrance to some theatre, and some one brought
me some brandy, but somebody else said I was
drunk, and they took it away again, and put me
out. They could see I was a fool, that I had n't
a friend on earth. And when I went out, there
was a big picture of a woman in tights, and the
word ' Amazons' overhead — and then I remem
bered you. I knew you were my friend, — the
only one I have on earth."

" It is very flattering, — to be remembered like
that," said Sister Soulsby, gently. The disposition
to laugh was smothered by a pained perception of
the suffering he was undergoing. His face had
grown drawn and haggard under the burden of his
memories as he rambled on.

" So I came straight to you," he began again.
" I had just money enough left to pay my fare.
The rest is in my valise at the hotel, — the Murray
Hill Hotel. It belongs to the church. I stole it
from the church. When I am dead they can get
it back again ! "

Sister Soulsby forced a smile to her lips.
" What nonsense you talk — about dying ! " she
exclaimed. "Why, man alive, you'll sleep this
all off like a top, if you '11 only lie down and give

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

yourself a chance. Come, now, you must do as
you 're told."

With a resolute hand, she made him lie down
again, and once more covered him with the fur.
He submitted, and did not even offer to put out
his arm this time, but looked in piteous dumbness
at her for a long time. While she sat thus in si
lence, the sound of Brother Soulsby moving about
upstairs became audible.

Theron heard it, and the importance of hurry
ing on some further disclosure seemed to suggest
itself. " I can see you think I 'm just drunk," he
said, in low, sombre tones. " Of course that 's
what he thought. The hackman thought so, and
so did the conductor, and everybody. But I
hoped you would know better. I was sure you
would see that it was something worse than that.
See here, I '11 tell you. Then you '11 understand.
I 've been drinking for two days and one whole
night, on my feet all the while, wandering alone
in that big strange New York, going through
places where they murdered men for ten cents,
mixing myself up with the worst people in low
bar-rooms and dance-houses, and they saw I had
money in my pocket, too, — and yet nobody
touched me, or offered to lay a finger on me. Do
you know why ? They understood that I wanted
to get drunk, and couldn't. The Indians won't
harm an idiot, or lunatic, you know. Well, it was
the same with these vilest of the vile. They saw

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

that I was a fool whom God had taken hold of, to
break his heart first, and then to craze his brain,
and then to fling him on a dunghill to die like a
dog. They believe in God, those people. They 're
the only ones who do, it seems to me. And they
wouldn't interfere when they saw what He was
doing to me. But I tell you I was n't drunk. I
have n't been drunk. I 'm only heart-broken, and
crushed out of shape and life, — that 's all. And
I 've crawled here just to have a friend by me
when — when I come to the end."

" You 're not talking very sensibly, or very
bravely either, Theron Ware," remarked his com
panion. " It 's cowardly to give way to notions
like that."

" Oh, I 'm not afraid to die ; don't think that,"
he remonstrated wearily. "If there is a Judg
ment, it has hit me as hard as it can already.
There can't be any hell worse than that I 've gone
through. Here I am talking about hell," he con
tinued, with a pained contraction of the muscles
about his mouth, — a still-born, malformed smile,
— " as if I believed in one ! I Ve got way through
all my beliefs, you know. I tell you that
frankly."

" It 's none of my business," she reassured him.
" I 'm not your Bishop, or your confessor. I 'm
just your friend, your pal, that 's all."

" Look here ! " he broke in, with some anima
tion and a new intensity of glance and voice.
3* 497

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" If I was going to live, I 'd have some funny
things to tell. Six months ago I was a good man.
1 not only seemed to be good, to others and to
myself, but I was good. I had a soul ; I had a
conscience. I was going along doing my duty, and
I was happy in it. We were poor, Alice and I,
and people behaved rather hard toward us, and
sometimes we were a little down in the mouth
about it ; but that was all. We really were happy ;
and I, — I really was a good man. Here 's the
kind of joke God plays ! You see me here six
months after. Look at me ! I have n't got an
honest hair in my head. I 'm a bad man through
and through, that 's what I am. I look all around
at myself, and there is n't an atom left anywhere
of the good man I used to be. And, mind you,
I never lifted a finger to prevent the change. I
did n't resist once ; I did n't make any fight. I
just walked deliberately down-hill, with my eyes
wide open. I told myself all the while that I was
climbing up-hill instead, but I knew in my heart
that it was a lie. Everything about me was a lie.
I wouldn't be telling the truth, even now, if — if
I had n't come to the end of my rope. Now, how
do you explain that ? How can it be explained ?
Was I really rotten to the core all the time, years
ago, when I seemed to everybody, myself and the
rest, to be good and straight and sincere ? Was it
all a sham, or does God take a good man and turn
him into an out-and-out bad one, in just a few

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

months, — in the time that it takes an ear of corn to
form and ripen and go off with the mildew ? Or is n't
there any God at all, — but only men who live and
die like animals? And that would explain my
case, wouldn't it? I got bitten and went vicious
and crazy, and they 've had to chase me out and
hunt me to my death like a mad dog ! Yes, that
makes it all very simple. It is n't worth while to
discuss me at all as if I had a soul, is it ? I 'm
just one more mongrel cur that 's gone mad, and
must be put out of the way. That 's all."

" See here," said Sister Soulsby, alertly, " I half
believe that a good cuffing is what you really stand
in need of. Now you stop all this nonsense, and
lie quiet and keep still ! Do you hear me? "

The jocose sternness which she assumed, in
words and manner, seemed to soothe him. He
almost smiled up at her in a melancholy way, and
sighed profoundly.

" I Ve told you my religion before," she went on
with gentleness. " The sheep and the goats are
to be separated on Judgment Day, but not a min
ute sooner. In other words, as long as human life
lasts, good, bad, and indifferent are all braided up
together in every man's nature, and every woman's
too. You were n't altogether good a year ago, any
more than you 're altogether bad now. You were
some of both then ; you 're some of both now. If
you 've been making an extra sort of fool of your
self lately, why, now that you recognize it, the only

499

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

thing to do is to slow steam, pull up, and back
engine in the other direction. In that way you '11
find things will even themselves up. It 's a see
saw with all of us, Theron Ware, — sometimes up ;
sometimes down. But nobody is rotten clear to
the core."

He closed his eyes, and lay in silence for a time.

" This is what day of the week?" he asked, at
last.

" Friday, the nineteenth."

" Wednesday, — that would be the seventeenth.
That was the day ordained for my slaughter. On
that morning, I was the happiest man in the world.
No king could have been so proud and confident
as I was. A wonderful romance had come to me.
The most beautiful young woman in the world, the
most talented too, was waiting for me. An ex
press train was carrying me to her, and it could n't
go fast enough to keep up with my eagerness.
She was very rich, and she loved me, and we were
to live in eternal summer, wherever we liked, on a
big, beautiful yacht. No one else had such a life
before him as that. It seemed almost too good
for me, but I thought I had grown and developed
so much that perhaps I would be worthy of it.
Oh, how happy I was ! I tell you this because — be
cause you are not like the others. You will under
stand."

" Yes, I understand," she said patiently. " Well
— you were being so happy."

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

" That was in the morning, — Wednesday the
seventeenth, — early in the morning. There was a
little girl in the car, playing with some buttons,
and when I tried to make friends with her, she
looked at me, and she saw, right at a glance, that
I was a fool. ' Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings,' you know. She was the first to find it
out. It began like that, early in the morning.
But then after that everybody knew it. They had
only to look at me and they said : ' Why, this is a
fool, — like a little nasty boy ; we won't let him
into our houses ; we find him a bore.' That is
what they said."

" Did she say it? " Sister Soulsby permitted her
self to ask.

For answer Theron bit his lips, and drew his
chin under the fur, and pushed his scowling face
into the pillow. The spasmodic, sob-like gasps
began to shake him again. She laid a compas
sionate hand upon his hot brow.

" That is why I made my way here to you," he
groaned piteously. "I knew you would sympa
thize ; I could tell it all to you. And it was so
awful, to die there alone in the strange city — I
could n't do it — with nobody near me who liked
me, or thought well of me. Alice would hate me.
There was no one but you. I wanted to be with
you — at the last."

His quavering voice broke off in a gust of weep
ing, and his face frankly surrendered itself to the

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

distortions of a crying child's countenance, wide-
mouthed and tragically grotesque in its abandon
ment of control.

Sister Soulsby, as her husband's boots were
heard descending the stairs, rose, and drew the
robe up to half cover his agonized visage. She
patted the sufferer softly on the head, and then
went to the stair-door.

" I think he '11 go to sleep now," she said, lifting
her voice to the new-comer, and with a backward
nod toward the couch. "Come out into the
kitchen while I get breakfast, or into the sitting-
room, or somewhere, so as not to disturb him.
He 's promised me to lie perfectly quiet, and try
to sleep."

When they had passed together out of the room,
she turned. " Soulsby," she said with half-playful
asperity, " I 'm disappointed in you. For a man
who 's knocked about as much as you have, I must
say you Ve picked up an astonishingly small outfit
of gumption. That poor creature in there is no
more drunk than I am. He 's been drinking, —
yes, drinking like a fish ; but it was n't able to make
him drunk. He 's past being drunk ; he 's grief-
crazy. It 's a case of ' woman.' Some girl has
made a fool of him, and decoyed him up in a bal
loon, and let him drop. He 's been hurt bad, too."

" We have all been hurt in our day and genera
tion," responded Brother Soulsby, genially. " Don't
you worry ; he '11 sleep that off, too. It takes

502

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

longer than drink, and it does n't begin to be so
pleasant, but it can be slept off. Take my word
for it, he '11 be a different man by noon."

When noon came, however, Brother Soulsby was
on his way to summon one of the village doctors.
Toward nightfall,, he went out again to telegraph
for Alice.

503

CHAPTER XXXII

SPRING fell early upon the pleasant southern
slopes of the Susquehanna country. The snow
went off as by magic. The trees budded and
leaved before their time. The birds came and
set up their chorus in the elms, while winter
seemed still a thing of yesterday.

Alice, clad gravely in black, stood again upon a
kitchen-stoop, and looked across an intervening
space of back-yards and fences to where the tall
boughs, fresh in their new verdure, were silhou
etted against the pure blue sky. The prospect
recalled to her irresistibly another sunlit morning,
a year ago, when she had stood in the doorway of
her own kitchen, and surveyed a scene not unlike
this ; it might have been with the same carolling
robins, the same trees, the same azure segment of
the tranquil, speckless dome. Then she was look
ing out upon surroundings novel and strange to
her, among which she must make herself at home
as best she could. But at least the ground was
secure under her feet ; at least she had a home,
and a word from her lips could summon her
husband out, to stand beside her with his arm

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

about her, and share her buoyant, hopeful joy in
the promises of spring.

To think that that was only one little year ago,
— the mere revolution of four brief seasons ! And
now !

Sister Soulsby, wiping her hands on her apron,
came briskly out upon the stoop. Some cheerful
commonplace was on her tongue, but a glance at
Alice's wistful face kept it back. She passed an
arm around her waist instead, and stood in silence,
looking at the elms.

"It brings back memories to me, — all this,"
said Alice, nodding her head, and not seeking to
dissemble the tears which sprang to her eyes.

"The men will be down in a minute, dear," the
other reminded her. " They 'd nearly finished
packing before I put the biscuits in the oven. We
must n't wear long faces before folks, you know."

" Yes, I know," murmured Alice. Then, with a
sudden impulse, she turned to her companion.
" Candace," she said fervently, " we 're alone here
for the moment ; I must tell you that if I don't
talk gratitude to you, it 's simply and solely because
I don't know where to begin, or what to say. I' m
just dumfounded at your goodness. It takes my
speech away. I only know this, Candace : God
will be very good to you."

" Tut ! tut ! " replied Sister Soulsby, " that 's all
right, you dear thing. I know just how you feel.
Don't dream of being under obligation to explain

505

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

it to me, or to thank us at all. We Ve had all
sorts of comfort out of the thing, — Soulsby and I.
We used to get downright lonesome, here all by
ourselves, and we Ve simply had a winter of pleas
ant company instead, that 's all. Besides, there 's
solid satisfaction in knowing that at last, for once
in our lives, we Ve had a chance to be of some
real use to somebody who truly needed it. You
can't imagine how stuck up that makes us in our
own conceit. We feel as if we were George Pea-
body and Lady Burdett-Coutts, and several other
philanthropists thrown in. No, seriously, don't
think of it again. We 're glad to have been able
to do it all ; and if you only go ahead now, and
prosper and be happy, why, that will be the only
reward we want."

" I hope we shall do well," said Alice. " Only
tell me this, Candace. You do think I was right,
don't you, in insisting on Theron's leaving the minis
try altogether ? He seems convinced enough now
that it was the right thing to do ; but I grow
nervous sometimes lest he should find it harder
than he thought to get along in business, and regret
the change — and blame me."

" I think you may rest easy in your mind about
that," the other responded. " Whatever else he
does, he will never want to come within gunshot
of a pulpit again. It came too near murdering him
for that."

Alice looked at her doubtfully. " Something

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

came near murdering him, I know. But it does n't
seem to me that I would say it was the ministry.
And I guess you know pretty well yourself what it
was. Of course, I 've never asked any questions,
and I 've hushed up everybody at Octavius who
tried to quiz me about it, — his disappearance and
my packing up and leaving, and all that — and I 've
never discussed the question with you — but — "

" No, and there 's no good going into it now,"
put in Sister Soulsby, with amiable decisiveness.
" It 's all past and gone. In fact, I hardly remem
ber much about it now myself. He simply got into
deep water, poor soul, and we Ve floated him out
again, safe and sound. That 's all. But all the
same, I was right in what I said. He was a mis
take in the ministry."

" But if you 'd known him in previous years,"
urged Alice, plaintively, " before we were sent to
that awful Octavius. He was the very ideal of all
a young minister should be. People used to simply
worship him, he was such a perfect preacher, and
so pure-minded and friendly with everybody, and
threw himself into his work so. It was all that
miserable, contemptible Octavius that did the
mischief."

Sister Soulsby slowly shook her head. " If there
had n't been a screw loose somewhere," she said
gently, " Octavius would n't have hurt him. No,
take my word for it, he never was the right man for
the place. He seemed to be, no doubt, but he

507

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

was n't. When pressure was put on him, it found out
his weak spot like a shot, and pushed on it, and —
well, it came near smashing him, that 's all."

" And do you think he '11 always be a — a back
slider," mourned Alice.

" For mercy's sake, don't ever try to have him
pretend to be anything else ! " exclaimed the other.
" The last state of that man would be worse than
the first. You must make up your mind to that.
And you must n't show that you 're nervous about
it. You must n't get nervous ! You must n't be
afraid of things. Just you keep a stiff upper lip,
and say you will get along, you will be happy.
That 's your only chance, Alice. He is n't going
to be an angel of light, or a saint, or anything of
that sort, and it 's no good expecting it. But he '11
be just an average kind of man, — a little sore about
some things, a little wiser than he was about some
others. You can get along perfectly with him, if
you only keep your courage up, and don't show
the white feather."

" Yes, I know ; but I Ve had it pretty well taken
out of me," commented Alice. "It used to come
easy to me to be cheerful and resolute and all that ;
but it 's different now."

Sister Soulsby stole a swift glance at the unsus
pecting face of her companion which was not all
admiration, but her voice remained patiently affec
tionate. " Oh, that '11 all come back to you, right
enough. You '11 have your hands full, you know,

508

finding a house, and unpacking all your old furni
ture, and buying new things, and getting your home
settled. It '11 keep you so busy you won't have
time to feel strange or lonesome, one bit. You '11
see how it '11 tone you up. In a year's time you
won't know yourself in the looking-glass."

" Oh, my health is good enough," said Alice ;
" but I can't help thinking, suppose Theron should
be taken sick again, away out there among strangers.
You know he 's never appeared to me to have quite
got his strength back. These long illnesses, you
know, they always leave a mark on a man."

" Nonsense ! He 's strong as an ox," insisted
Sister Soulsby. " You mark my word, he '11 thrive
in Seattle like a green bay-tree."

" Seattle ! " echoed Alice, meditatively. " It
sounds like the other end of the world, does n't it? "

The noise of feet in the house broke upon the
colloquy, and the women went indoors, to join the
breakfast party. During the meal, it was Brother
Soulsby who bore the burden of the conversation.
He was full of the future of Seattle and the mag
nificent impending development of that Pacific
section. He had been out there, years ago, when
it was next door to uninhabited. He had visited
the district twice since, and the changes discover
able each new time were more wonderful than any
thing Aladdin's lamp ever wrought. He had secured
for Theron, through some of his friends in Port
land, the superintendency of a land and real estate

5°9

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

company, which had its headquarters in Seattle,
but ambitiously linked its affairs with the future of
all Washington Territory. In an hour's time the
hack would come to take the Wares and their bag
gage to the depot, the first stage in their long
journey across the continent to their new home.
Brother Soulsby amiably filled the interval with
reminiscences of the Oregon of twenty years back,
with instructive dissertations upon the soil, climate,
and seasons of Puget Sound and the Columbia
valley, and, above all, with helpful characterizations
of the social life which had begun to take form in
this remotest West. He had nothing but confi
dence, to all appearances, in the success of his
young friend, now embarking on this new career.
He seemed so sanguine about it that the whole
atmosphere of the breakfast room lightened up,
and the parting meal, surrounded by so many
temptations to distraught breedings and silences as
it was, became almost jovial in its spirit.

At last, it was time to look for the carriage.
The trunks and hand-bags were ready in the hall,
and Sister Soulsby was tying up a package of sand
wiches for Alice to keep by her in the train.

Theron, with hat in hand, and overcoat on arm,
loitered restlessly into the kitchen, and watched
this proceeding for a moment. Then he sauntered
out upon the stoop, and, lifting his head and draw
ing as long a breath as he could, looked over at
the elms.

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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

Perhaps the face v/as older and graver ; it was
hard to tell. The long winter's illness, with its
recurring crises and sustained confinement, had
bleached his skin and reduced his figure to gaunt-
ness, but there was none the less an air of restored
and secure good health about him. Only in the
eyes themselves, as they rested briefly upon the
prospect, did a substantial change suggest itself.
They did not dwell fondly upon the picture of the
lofty, spreading boughs, with their waves of sap-
green leafage stirring against the blue. They did
not soften and glow this time, at the thought of
how wholly one felt sure of God's goodness in
these wonderful new mornings of spring.

They looked instead straight through the fairest
and most moving spectacle in nature's proces
sional, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a
formless sort of place which was Seattle. They
surveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined
dimensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and-
fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of
the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some
faces of men, then more behind them, then a great
concourse of uplifted countenances, crowded close
together as far as the eye could reach. They were
attentive faces all, rapt, eager, credulous to a de
gree. Their eyes were admiringly bent upon a
common object of excited interest. They were
looking at him; they strained their ears to miss
no cadence of his voice. Involuntarily he straight-

5"

THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

ened himself, stretched forth his hand with the
pale, thin fingers gracefully disposed, and passed
it slowly before him from side to side, in a com
prehensive, stately gesture. The audience rose at
him, as he dropped his hand, and filled his day
dream with a mighty roar of applause, in volume
like an ocean tempest, yet pitched for his hearing
alone.

He smiled, shook himself with a little delighted
tremor, and turned on the stoop to the open door.

" What Soulsby said about politics out there
interested me enormously," he remarked to the
two women. " I should n't be surprised if I found
myself doing something in that line. I can speak,
you know, if I can't do anything else. Talk is
what tells, these days. Who knows? I may turn
up in Washington a full-blown senator before I 'm
forty. Stranger things have happened than that,
out West ! "

" We '11 come down and visit you then, Soulsby
and I," said Sister Soulsby, cheerfully. "You
shall take us to the White House, Alice, and in
troduce us."

" Oh, it isn't likely /would come East," said
Alice, pensively. " Most probably I 'd be left to
amuse myself in Seattle. But there — I think
that 's the carriage driving up to the door."

THE END.

512

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Santa Cruz Jitney

PS1707.D2 1897

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